


Limbo

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: College AU, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Flashbacks, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Sam Winchester Big Bang 2017, alcohol use, stanford-ish au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:21:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sam got a scholarship; full ride. Yes, he's been doing those breathing exercises, and no, they don't work. He just forgets to eat sometimes, it's no big deal. Yes, he still has those nightmares. No, he doesn't know what they mean.No, it is not a memory; Dean was never bleeding out in the back seat.--Sam is a law major at Stanford University, with his brother and friends by his side. He has mostly everything he’s ever wanted, except for the uncontrollable nightmares, instant anxiety in most public situations, and unhelpful therapists who talk more of themselves than him. But, he does have good memories; dancing under multi-colored lights; fields of wild grass and dandelions at the side of crystal rivers; Dean taking him swimming at the age of fifteen, the water clear and the sand burning his feet, the evening sky orange and cloudless. But, good things can't last forever.One day at a time, Sam begins to wake up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [2016-2017 Sam Winchester Big Bang.](http://samwinchesterbigbang.tumblr.com/)  
> thank you to [dmsilvisart](http://dmsilvisart.tumblr.com) for doing the absolutely beautiful artwork for this fic!! the pieces are better than anything i could've hoped for and i'm totally in love with them!! find the art masterpost [here!!](http://dmsilvisart.tumblr.com/post/158477405513/art-masterpost-sam-winchester-big-bang)
> 
> this is the longest fic i've ever written for anything spn related, i think, so i hope you enjoy!! it was a blast to write, and was totally worth losing sleep over. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr!](http://dandymot.tumblr.com/)

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**part i.**

  _“She was like a drowning person, flailing,_

_reaching for anything that might save her._

_Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”_

  _— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated_

 

Sam walked to therapy on a Wednesday afternoon, the grass by the pavement freshly mowed and the trees vibrant with colour. The day was warm; extremely so, with the sun beating down against Sam’s skin, and he cursed himself for owning nothing but sweatpants and jeans in a climate such as this. He saw groups of teens sitting in circles on the hot tarmac as they passed around cans of soda, laughing until they cried; people met on the street, clapped each other on the shoulders before departing again. Children ran down the sidewalk in a blind hurry toward the park, their parents struggling to keep up.

Sam saw these things, these people, domesticity and hope written all over their actions, and thought maybe it wasn’t so bad that he had a life and a hidden desire to live it.

It had taken a lot to get to where he was; eighteen years of feeling like he was _wrong_ , all the slamming doors and beer bottles, the way his Father’s words had carried venom all too easily when he’d shouted “ _if you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back!”._

But, he’d had Dean. Dean drove the car, paid the bills, forced Sam to get out of bed to answer a phone call, or reply to an email, or go to an interview. He was an ever-constant presence. And on the night Sam had planned on leaving for Stanford, his bags packed and his acceptance letter somewhere between them, Dean had gone right along with him. He’d fought back against their Father with just as much rage.

So maybe Sam was doing this for himself, like his Father had said, but he was also doing it for Dean. Because Dean had encouraged him to enroll, helped him write the application, convinced him to go, and somewhere down the line, convinced him to live.

And Sam wasn’t close to recovery, not at all, but he had to start somewhere. And maybe this, a shabby two bedroom apartment shared with his brother and dinner always being ready when Sam wanted it, was Sam’s _somewhere._

So he kept walking, falling into the easy step he remembered so well until he reached the building. It was made of bricks and was practically falling apart, the sign weathered, the bike racks rusted, but Sam knew everyone there, whether they were a psychiatrist or another patient, and they all knew him. So, every Wednesday without fail for the last two months, Sam made the trek to this building of hurt, and loss, and grief, where maybe, just maybe, his problems could be lessened.

And if that was all that could be done, he would be okay.

 

—

 

Therapy did not go well that Wednesday.

Sam was informed that his previous doctor - Anna Milton, a kind girl with red hair and a bright smile who was devoted to her work - had transferred from this clinic to another. Sam was not given any reason or explanation as he sat down in his usual chair, with it’s uncomfortable blue fabric. He was given the information, sharp and to the point, by his new therapist.

He called himself Uriel, and Sam couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been given that name or chose it for a strange religious reason.

Uriel said that he was going to be a trial until they could find a replacement for Anna.

‘We’ll need to find somebody to suit your—’ Uriel cleared his throat, organised his papers on his desk once more— ‘requirements.’

Not much was said during that hour-long session.

It wasn’t like with Anna; you could walk into her office with the slightest frown on your face and she would be asking questions, because she knew her clients. She knew about Sam’s brother, and the neighbors, and the guy he had a crush on who lived twenty minutes away, the professors he liked and the ones he didn’t. She knew of his parents and his past, his first kiss and the name of the first lady he’d ever spoken to on a support line.

Anna was as much a friend as she was a doctor, a supportive steel beam that Sam could rely on, and she had vanished into thin air, taking all of Sam’s progress with her.

And now Uriel was sitting in Anna’s chair, hands clasped on the table, a tight, forced smile on his face. He looked at Sam like he wanted something. He was expecting Sam to know the drill, even though his hands were shaking and he was scratching his ribs under his shirt.

‘Where would you like to begin?’ Uriel said, and Sam realized just how much he hated change.

 

—

 

The next part of Sam’s evening went by in a numb blur. He came home from therapy having talked about nothing he had planned to— the college work that was piling up and his lack of sleep, to name a few—and had felt like he’d gone on autopilot, a backseat spectator to himself. He was seeing everything in slow motion; every move felt sluggish, each sound muffled.

He’d gotten this way before, and the first time it happened, he thought he’d been poisoned. He almost laughed at the memory.

So Sam came home, stumbled in the door and promptly fell onto the couch, one leg hanging off, his face scrunched up and pressed into the pillow.

Some time later, he woke with a start to the sound of glass against a solid surface. His eyes flew open and within seconds Dean was kneeling down in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulder and helping him sit upright on the couch.

‘Eat.’ Dean pressed a small plate of lasagna into Sam’s hands.

Sam pulled a face, but began to eat when Dean shot him a glare from the other side of the room. The lights were on, it was dark outside, and Dean was in clean clothes. The unexpected time jump made Sam pause.

‘Uh, what time is it?’ Sam asked, his voice gravelly as he picked apart his food in layers.

Dean took a glance at his watch. ‘Just after nine.’

‘When did you get home?’

Dean paused, turned to watch Sam with furrowed brows and when Sam looked genuinely curious, he groaned.

‘Are you _actually_ blind?’ Dean began with a disbelieving laugh, and Sam frowned, cocked his head. ‘I left- I left a note on the back of the door!’

Dean proceeded to march past Sam toward the front door, and ripped a bright green page off of it. He held it in front of Sam.

 _Sam,_ it began, in a scrawl that was undeniably Dean’s. _Benny called in sick earlier (we all know he’s just hungover, he’s a terrible liar) so I’m going to take a couple hours of his shift. I’ll be home before 9. Dinner’s in the oven, just heat it up. Dean._

Sam looked up at his brother, and then toward the door. ‘Sorry.’

He left his plate on the cushion next to him, kicking off his boots as he crossed the room.

‘Sam,’ Dean said, stern, and Sam paused, arms crossed. ‘What’s up?’

Sam shrugged. Dean’s face went soft.

‘C’mon, man. The note you might’ve missed, sure, but you don’t just crash on the couch for five hours and not eat anything.’

Sam and Dean had lived together their whole lives, and it was both a blessing and a curse to know each other so well. It was a blessing on the days Sam had too much on his conscience, but a curse on the days he wanted to figure things out by himself, find his own bearings.

So, Sam tried to lie; a simple one, with a hint of truth. He stuffed his shaking hands into his pockets. ‘I’m fine, Dean. Just...therapy, y’know-’

‘What happened at therapy?’

Sam faltered, looked away.

‘Sam.’

The memory of John’s demanding tone merged with Dean’s concern, and the words flew from Sam’s mouth. ‘It’s nothing, just- Dr. Milton transferred, they need to find a replacement. That’s all.’

‘What?’ Dean furrowed his eyebrows in annoyance, stretched out his arm. ‘Why did she transfer? We should’ve been told, they should have a replacement ready.’

‘Dean, it’s fine.’

Sam began toward his room, willing himself to get away from Dean, this conversation, this feeling of terror in his stomach.

‘It’s really _not_ ,’ Dean said, volume raising as Sam reached his room. He closed the door behind him like he couldn’t do it fast enough, and every sound echoed off the walls, dragged out by an unknown force just to torture Sam further.

 

—

 

The waitress smiled, placed plates gently on the table before turning away, and within seconds Dean was rolling his eyes and gesticulating wildly like he did so well.

‘I can’t believe you ordered a salad. On a Friday night! Of all-’

Sam huffed before hitting Dean on the side of the head with his menu. He received a glare, and grinned. ‘Shut up.’

The door far behind Sam opened and Dean looked up, his glare turning to a smile. He raised a hand and waved halfheartedly, let his gaze linger.

Sam tilted his head to the side, tried to get between Dean’s line of vision, a small laugh coming out in a breathy exhale. ‘What are you doing?’

Dean turned his attention to Sam, shuffled around in his seat. The faintest of blushes spread over his cheeks. ‘Cas and Gabe wanna eat lunch with us. Cas asked the other day.’

And suddenly Sam laughed, head tilted forward, clapping once, twice. ‘Oh, Jesus-’

Dean rolled his eyes, and spoke under his breath. ‘Oh, yeah, you’re so upset about Gabe talking to you-’

Sam picked up a piece of lettuce on his fork, leaning forward on the table. ‘If you can stop ogling at Cas for five seconds-’

‘I don’t _ogle._ ’ Dean kept his eyes on Sam, playful shock covering his features.

Sam nodded, smirking. ‘Yes you do.’

‘You follow Gabe around like a puppy.’ Dean grinned.

‘Shut up.’

Dean laughed at Sam’s expression; he held out his hands, palms up, raising his eyebrows in a “told you so” gesture. ‘It’s true!’

‘Just-’ Sam sighed. He scrunched up his nose in defeat, stealing a french fry from Dean’s plate.

Within seconds, Cas and Gabe were at the table, sliding in beside them; Cas on Dean’s side, and Gabe on Sam’s. Quiet conversation was made as the two new arrivals ordered their coffees; Cas absentmindedly let his eyes linger on a notepad he’d brought in with him, unaware of Dean leaning on the table and smiling dopily into his hand, while Gabe was turned to Sam, his usual cocky smile shining, rattling on about their professors and overdue essays.

At some point during the conversation, Sam accidentally stopped listening, zoned out until everything felt slow and nonexistent. He still focused on Gabe, however, smiling and nodding. He continued the conversation, even with a blank and foggy thought process.

But then, Gabe said something that brought Sam back into the world of sharp responses and clear minds.

‘-Oh yeah, I’m going to a party next Friday, real fun, filled with potential love interests - wanna come?’ He said it with such a casual tone that Sam almost missed it; Gabe was the embodiment of nonchalant and Sam both loved and hated him for it.

Instead of responding, nodding or shaking his head, Sam just gawked, and it seemed to cause Gabe no confusion; he just grinned a little wider, slouched a little further.

Dean swooped in and saved his brother from any further embarrassment, pointing between himself and Cas. ‘Hey, why aren’t we invited?’

‘’Cause it’s for cool kids with cool majors.’ Gabe jumped from feeling amused to smug in seconds, winking at Dean before bringing his coffee to his lips.

Cas rolled his eyes, tipped his head forward in an disbelieving gesture. ‘You’re both studying law.’

‘Exactly!’ And then Gabe was looking back at Sam again, eyes wide and even slightly hopeful. ‘So, you comin’ or what?’

Sam pondered for a moment, but when he looked over at Dean and saw his brother’s eyebrows raised so high they could’ve flown away, he knew he wouldn’t be allowed say no.

‘I guess I need a break,’ Sam sighed, smiling gently, covering it up by wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He nodded at Gabe, a final agreement.

Gabe practically bounced up and down in his seat. He slapped Sam on the shoulder, let his hand linger. ‘Atta boy! You’re way more fun than Cas.’

‘I have to study a lot, you know.’ There was a hint of amusement in Cas’ tone.

‘Yeah, what’re you doing?’ Sam asked, but Dean seemed a lot more interested and gave Sam a small, appreciative nod for his effort.

‘Psychology.’

Dean’s eyebrows flew up from across the table, and he whistled, low and quiet, before taking a swig of his drink.

Gabriel took notice of this and seized the moment; kicked up his legs and rested them on the seat opposite. His face was a mixture of pride and smugness. ‘Look at my brother with his fancy major, eh?’

Dean nodded toward Sam with his glass, grinning; mentions of future careers always made Dean seem like a proud parent. ‘Dude, Sam’s going to be a _lawyer._ ’

‘And so am I. That makes it boring.’ Gabriel snatched a piece of lettuce from Sam’s plate, and the way his face scrunched up in disgust just made Sam laugh.

 

—

 

‘Is anyone sitting here?’

It took Sam a moment to finish the sentence he’d been writing, and when he looked up, he was immediately met with blonde hair, falling in messy, tangled waves, two encyclopedia-sized books stacked on top of one another, and a kind but nervous smile.

If Dean were there, he’d tell Sam that she looked like the kind of girl that could kick his ass three ways through Sunday using nothing but her heels and her wordplay. He’d also tell Sam that having a girl like that as a friend would be the best thing that could ever happen to him.

Sam smiled, timid and slightly awkward, gesturing to the seat across from him. ‘Uh, nope. Feel free.’

The girl exhaled in relief, falling into the small chair with a smile. ‘Thanks.’

As she set up her things, Sam rotated between scribbling down notes and rubbing his eyes. It was an hour or so before closing; people were gradually filtering out, and those who remained were getting more exhausted by the minute. Within about twenty minutes, the girl tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up at Sam, leaning on the table.

‘Sooo, what’re ya studying?’

‘Uh…’ Sam shrugged, scanned his page, looked for a chapter title that meant anything. ‘Religion, Democracy, and Human Rights. Boring stuff, right?’

Jess shook her head. ‘Actually, I find it kinda interesting. Law?’

‘Yep. You?’

‘Epidemiology and Clinical Research.’

Sam quietly whistled. ‘That’s a mouthful.’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, though.’ The girl shrugged, smiled.

A pause.

After a few seconds of silence, the girl leaned back in her chair, thrust an outstretched hand toward Sam with a smile and relaxed shoulders. ‘I’m Jess.’

Sam took her hand, shook it. ‘Sam. Nice to meet you.’

 

—

 

_Sam was in the driver’s seat of the car, and Dean was slumped over in the back seat, dried blood on his lips, running down to his chin, covering his shirt. John was practically bent over himself, rocking back and forth._

_Sam could barely hear himself when he spoke, rage and pain all bundled into one, static wild in his ears. ‘Look, just hold on, alright? The hospital’s only ten minutes away.’_

_Sam glanced at his father, and then his eyes were back on the road, knuckles white on the steering wheel._

_John shook his head, exhaled, eyebrows furrowed. ‘I’m surprised at you, Sammy. Why didn’t you kill it?’_

_He was looking at Sam, now; expecting something, his pause meant for his son, for a grand explanation. Sam wavered, gripped the wheel a little tighter; keep going, keep driving, Dean’s bleeding out on the back seat-_

_John spoke again, and his words were all pushed together like he was running out of borrowed time. ‘Thought we saw eye-to-eye on this, killing this demon comes first; before me, before everything.’_

_Sam didn’t look at his father; hospital’s ten minutes away, keep going, keep-_

_He glanced in the rearview mirror and Dean was leaning against the window, struggling to keep his eyes open after each blink._

_Sam spoke with a small shake of his head, an adjustment of his hand on the wheel, an all-too-careful glance back at his brother. ‘No sir.’_

_A pause._

_‘Not before everything.’_

_And in his peripheral vision Sam saw the disappointment and rage that swept over John’s face as he turned to face the road._

_Sam felt like a child again; trying to explain himself but knowing that no matter what he said, it wouldn’t be good enough. It wouldn’t meet John’s definition of a good enough reason for sacrifice._

_‘Look—’ Sam said, the words escaping him in a frenzy, trying to make some kind of sense through the fog over his eyes and the numbness in his head—‘we still got the Colt, we still have the one bullet left, we just have to start over, alright? I mean, we already found the demon once-’_

_The breaking of glass was all Sam could hear for a split second, and then he jerked to the side as an unknown force with a blinding light pushed him, pushed the car. With one last glance toward Dean in the rearview mirror— because it was Dean over Sam, everytime—Sam felt his head collide with hard metal, and then all he could see, and feel, and comprehend was pain._

But within milliseconds of his vision going dark, there was a blue flash behind his eyes, and he was staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, trembling all over, his head aching, his palms sweaty and his breathing uneven.

Sam tried to sit up but couldn’t find the strength; his head still felt numb, the static still buzzing. He couldn’t push himself up because his hand were too shaky to be even mildly useful, and although the covers were light, he couldn’t muster up the will to kick them off and stand up.

Sam used the last of his strength to roll onto his stomach and wait; wait until the tremors stopped, until he could hear, until he could even think.

Sometime late in the night, he heard footsteps in the room outside, a fridge door opening, a quiet humming of a song he probably knew. The TV was on in seconds, turned down low, and although Sam didn’t return to sleep, it only took a few hours for the shaking to end, and a few more for the sun to rise.

 

—

 

When Sam stepped into the office - scraped clean of the fact that Anna had been working there for almost a decade, each bookcase empty and the calming blue walls now pure white - hoping that their search for a new therapist was successful, he frowned at Uriel, who was watching Sam.

For the second week in what was likely to be a long string of similar appointments, not a word was uttered apart from the occasional “ _how are you doing, Sam?”,_ followed by a “ _how are you doing,_ really?”, and being told that although it might not seem like it, therapists are here to help.

Sam didn’t tell Uriel about the party he was going to, like he would have with Anna—there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that she would have picked out his clothes for him, perfected his hair and gave him a pep talk on safe sex. He didn’t mention the fact that he’d made a new friend for the first time in what seemed like eons, or how, not even two nights before, Sam had had a nightmare of his father and Dean bleeding out, while they spoke of demons and guns and bullets, before being hit by a truck and presumably _killed._

Sam couldn’t stand the silence anywhere, the expectations Uriel was pressing down on him with a smile and clasped hands. He told Uriel he made a new friend, Jessica; Uriel nodded, told Sam to go on.

Sam announced he had nothing else to say and stood up, planning on taking the long way home.

 

—

 

‘Dean, I don’t know what to wear.’

Sam stood beside the couch where Dean sat, his legs kicked up on the coffee table, a plate of pizza and a soda in his lamp.

When he saw Sam’s hopeful expression and smile Dean dropped his food onto the coffee table, crossing his arms, his head tipped forward with a quizzical roll of the eyes. ‘Dude. C’mon.’

Sam was practically bouncing up and down, pointing back at his room and the clothes littering the floor. ‘Please, it’ll take two minutes, I don’t wanna make an idiot of myself in front of, y’know.’

Dean slowly got to his feet with an exaggerated sigh, and Sam exhaled in relief. ‘You owe me.’

Sam let out a laugh as they approached his bedroom. Once inside, Dean kicked the door closed,  glancing at the different garments covering his bed and the floor. ‘Did he say what kinda party it is?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Probably the type where everybody gets slammed.’

‘Right. Of course. So….’ Dean jumped around the room, picking up a t-shirt here, a jacket there, practically cleaning Sam’s room as he frowned at his brother’s clothing selection.

Having a decent sense of fashion was one of the things Dean prided himself on around Sam, and Sam only. He supposed he got it from the various partners he’d had in his teenage years; after all, it took Dean almost sixteen years of his life to realize how comfortable oversized sweaters were and how much he liked pastel green.

Sam had been looking for deodorant in Dean’s bag the first time he’d stumbled upon Dean’s secret, unusually colourful clothing choices, about two or three years after it all began. Sam hadn’t really acknowledged it, and tucked the different shirts and hoodies back into the back as if he’d never seen them at all. However, that evening, Dean approached Sam with his deodorant in hand, face pale, and questioned him as to where he’d found the bottle. Sam had shrugged, leaned back on the couch, and asked if he could borrow Dean’s purple hoodie and the tie-dye t-shirt sometime.

A few days later, Sam found those two exact items in his bag, and he didn’t take them off for a week, telling his Father that he bought them for himself and ignoring the critique.

So seeing Dean fussing over Sam’s party outfit was like seeing him back in one of his elements - the other being fixing up cars you wouldn’t expect to have a shred of life left in them.

Dean tossed Sam a black henley. This. Oh, and this.’

Sam inspected the second item in his hands and tilted his head. ‘Dean, this is a cardigan.’

Dean shrugged. ‘You always wear cardigans.’

‘I mean, _yeah,_ but-’

‘Fucking- Alright, tough guy. Those jeans are fine, try this top.’ Dean rolled his eyes, tossed Sam a navy t-shirt and a denim button down.

Sam laughed as his almost-tidy room was now a mess all over again; Dean was plucking clothes from the ground and throwing them at Sam like he knew which went with which.

‘Or you can wear this top,’ a grey t-shirt flew over his head, ‘and this sweater over it. Oh, this coat, too. When did you even buy this? Have you ever even _worn_ -’

Sam snatched the items from Dean’s grip, pulling open the door and ushering his brother outside. ‘Yeah, yeah, shut up. Lemme get changed.’

After a quick tidying off his room, Sam got changed, standing in the mirror for a solid five minutes just to see if he liked the outfit less the longer he looked at it. With one last nod of approval he returned to the living room, where Dean had retreated back to the couch. He looked up when Sam walked in.

‘Does this look okay?’ Sam pushed himself onto the balls of his feet, gesturing to his outfit with a sheepish smile.

Dean leaned back, tilted his head. ‘Hmm….’

Sam frowned. ‘That sounds like a no.’

‘It’s not a _no_ , you ass, just-’ Dean gesticulated, eyebrows furrowed in focus.

‘Unbutton the sweater thing, you look like you’re about to choke.’ Sam reached up, undoing the top two buttons.

‘Roll up those jeans, they look way too long - which is an achievement for you, by the way.’ Sam rolled his eyes, sitting down cross legged on the floor to turn the jeans until they were just above the ankle.

‘The belt and jacket look okay...Yeah, you’re good to go. Wear those stupid brown boots you like. They match the jacket.’

Sam grinned, disappearing back into his room, reappearing seconds later with a pair of shoes he’d bought a few months before. ‘Thanks, Dean.’

Dean leaned forward with narrowed eyes, pointing to Sam - who was pulling on his shoes and jumping around the living room to keep balance. ‘If you tell anyone that I helped you pick your _date outfit_ I will murder you in your sleep.’

Sam let out an exasperated sigh, finding the nearest mirror in three long-legged strides and fixing his hair. ‘It’s not a date!’

Dean let out a laugh. ‘Oh, that’s fuckin’ rich!’

Moments later, the loud shrill of a doorbell echoed through the apartment, and Dean whistled.

‘Oooh, your boyfriend’s here!’

Sam threw him the middle finger as he snatched his wallet, keys and phone off the coffee table, and Dean gave him a reassuring thumbs up. Only after Sam greeted Gabe, noticed their hands almost touching as Gabe sauntered down the stairs, did Sam register the soft smile Dean gave him before he shut the door.

 

—

 

Sam wondered two hours in, after memorizing the lyrics of 15 songs he’d heard once on the radio before they’d been criticized by Dean, and after refusing both beer and West Coast Cooler on many different occasions with a strained smile, if this party was a good idea.

He was on a couch, one of those couches you’d find for cheap online with off-brown cushions that are punctured and sinking. He was pretty sure somebody spilled beer on his jacket when they drunkenly stumbled past. A girl had tried to sit in his lap within ten minutes of his arrival, so he gently pushed her into the seat beside him, where she had sat for half an hour, staring absentmindedly at the wall before a young boy tugged her up and away.

Most importantly, Gabe had disappeared into the crowd some time ago, and hadn’t returned.

Sam was left wondering what he was actually doing here, and remembered all the other parties that had ended like this; he would find himself on the lawn, or in a bathroom, and Dean would come and collect him, because _of course he would._ Of course Sam couldn’t go out for more than half an hour and think he needed to be somewhere else, anywhere but _here._

But Sam didn’t text Dean, didn’t call him, didn’t get somebody to drive him home. Instead, he stood up on heavy legs, and made his way through the house, to find Gabe.

The first thing he realized was that every room was unnecessarily _loud_ , with music coming from speakers that didn’t seem to even be there. He didn’t know when all these people got here, or who they were, or if he was the only one who wasn’t used to parties.

It only took ten minutes, but during a gap in the music, Sam heard Gabe laugh, light and happy, and Sam followed the sound like it was the only thing he could hear over the shouting, the smashing of bottles.

He found Gabe outside on an old, rusting swingset with a person Sam had never seen before; short hair, a mess of gentle blond curls, sitting next to Gabe. They faced each other, sitting sideways across the swings, two empty beer bottles on the ground between them.

Sam approached them slowly, trying not to interrupt. It only took a few seconds before Gabe’s head whipped around, took in Sam’s form, and gestured for Sam to come over.

‘Sam! Alright, so-’ He hopped off the swing, grabbed Sam’s arm and led him over. ‘This is- This is Balthazar. He’s, ah, my friend!’

‘Second cousins, twice-removed sounds more accurate.’

‘Shut up, you,’ Gabe joked with a point in Balthazar’s direction. He laughed before Gabe turned back to Sam. ‘I’m really sorry for up and leaving you in there.’

‘I didn’t know he’d be here, you see,’ Balthazar said, leaning toward them. ‘We haven’t exactly spoken for a while.’

‘Yeah, that’s one way to say it.’ Gabe rolled his eyes, scratched his neck as he looked at Sam. ‘Why don’t we go back inside, eh? Get us some more drinks.’

Gabe looked at Balthazar, giving a gentle and quick nod, before patting Sam on the shoulder and leading them inside.

‘Nice to meet you, Sam!’ Balthazar called as they walked away, and Sam could practically hear him smile. The tone he used, a mixture of sarcasm and expectancy, made Sam wonder why his name came from Balthazar’s mouth with ease.

But then Sam’s ears were again assaulted with overly loud music, blocking out everything else but Gabe’s lingering hand at his side.

And from that moment on, the night got significantly better.

He didn’t think the beer had anything to do with it, but Gabe surely did; he was just _there,_ a constant source of jokes and sarcasm and the stuff that made Sam unexplainably happy. They even _danced,_ and although Sam couldn’t dance for the life of him and almost fell on his ass twice, he couldn’t find it in himself to care because this, _this,_ the blending of dozens of attitudes into one of happiness and content, where all worries disappear for just a night and will be remembered lazily in the morning, is what Sam had wanted college to be. And if he could get more nights like this, with Gabe’s carefree grin and Dean’s memorable and teasing encouragement, he would treasure them more than any college degree.

But as all good things do, the night ended slowly, calming down until the people began to scatter in varying levels of intoxication, calling friends to pick them up or simply walking home. The once-blaring music quieted to just a hum in the background, and eventually, Gabe and Sam headed home.

They didn’t take the car; Gabe left a note on his friend’s dining room table to say he’d come over for it in the morning, because even after downing a few beers and some shots of whiskey—which had been a bad idea from the start, and Sam didn’t stop laughing for ten minutes—he cared about road safety.

They walked down the block, got some proper food—which consisted of a shared pizza, fries and water—and were slouched against each other in the back of a taxi within minutes. Neither of them were necessarily drunk, and their hangovers wouldn’t be anything water and aspirin couldn’t fix, but they were still left in a fit of giggles until they stopped at Sam’s apartment complex.

Sam stepped out onto the pavement and surprisingly, Gabe followed; he asked the driver to wait, and hurried after Sam after shutting the door.

‘Ay, Sam?’ Gabe began, eyes big and bright, a smile ever present.

Sam spun around when they reached the main door.

‘See anyone nice tonight? Y’know, I’d-totally-make-out-with-you-if-you-knew-I-existed wise?’

 _You,_ Sam’s mind responded, but his mouth was faster.

‘Uh, nope,’ Sam said with a slight chuckle, running a hand through his fringe.

Gabe rocked back and forward on his heels. ‘When _is_ the last time you went on a proper date?’

Sam thought for a second, smiled at the memory. ‘A little after I graduated high school, with this guy who worked at a bar downtown. He was a, uh, freelance artist, I think. He asked me out with a drawing he’d done of me when I sat at the bar. Poetic, right?’

Gabe nodded, but then drew in a breath, reached into the back pocket of his jeans; his smile was shy, eyes scrunched up slightly. ‘Cas is the only reason I’m embarrassing myself like this. And I mean, it might not be embarrassing! But it probably will be and you’ll hate me so much, you’ll get Dean to lock you away and you’ll turn into Boo Radley.’

Sam laughed. ‘Gabe, I don’t-’

‘Just, shut up a sec.’ Gabe held up a finger. ‘According to Cas, we’re both oblivious assholes with superiority complexes that’ll get us killed some day - his words, not mine. They have seen us secretly pining for months and are fed up of us avoiding the topic. So-’

He took Sam’s hand, opened his palm, and pressed a small piece of folded-up paper into it.

‘You’re cool, and smart, and you sound like you’ve got a pun book shoved up your ass half the time. I kind of want to hold your hand and make out with you sometimes. And since you haven’t had a date since you graduated, I figured I would leave you a sad and lonely college student no longer. I can’t draw, and I’m no barman from Kansas, but I try.’

Sam was just staring, jaw hanging slightly slack with his head tilted to the side, so Gabe closed up his hand to keep the note safe.

‘Cas had told me earlier that if I didn’t give this to you, he’d find out and tell you about this himself, and I wasn’t letting that happen. So, if you figure that two future law graduates being together is a good idea, there is a time and place for a date in there.’

And then he was retreating down the path, getting into the taxi, grinning at Sam one last time.

It took two minutes before Sam moved, stepped inside, fumbling with the keys to their apartment door. But as soon as closed the door behind him and he felt the piece of paper rubbing at his skin, Sam realized he had just been asked on a date, and laughed.

 

—

 

Jess invited Sam out for drinks; Dean was upset that he couldn’t go, and was pretend-pouting the entire time he drove Sam to the bar.

‘She’s my friend! That’s it,’ Sam laughed, and Dean rolled his eyes, eyes drawn to the road in it’s dreary yellow lamplight.

‘’Course you’ve got all the college girls chasin’ you around,’ he groaned, but there was a joking tone to his voice; Sam knew Dean was happy that he was going out at all. ‘All I get is Benny whackin’ me in the face with an oil rag every so often.’

‘And that’s the most action you’re ever gonna get,’ Sam quipped, and got a shove to the shoulder for his efforts.

‘At least I can get into bars without a fake ID, college boy.’

And when they reached the place—a modern little thing, tucked into the corner of a street, the windows blue with fairy lights—they found Jess standing outside, and Dean had to be convinced, yet again, that this wasn’t a date.

Because there Jess was, her hair in ringlets, wearing clothes that seemed way too pretty for a downtown bar, and Dean had to stop in his tracks.

Sam felt an arm on his shoulder as he walked toward her.

‘ _That’s_ Jess?’ Dean’s said, his jaw looking almost unhinged. ‘How did—How’d _you_ get invited out for drinks with somebody like _her_?’

Sam shrugged, smiled a little too smugly for Dean’s taste. ‘She sat down next to me in study.’

And soon enough, Dean was gone, and both Sam and Jess had found a table for themselves. Jess disappeared toward the bar, and returned some minutes later with two glasses in her hands.

She placed one in front of Sam before taking a seat; he squinted at it, at the pink liquid and slice of lime on the side, before looking up at her. ‘What is it?’

Jess shrugged, took a sip of her own. ‘Pink lemonade.’

Sam hummed in approval, taking a large gulp of his drink.

‘....And tequila.’

Sam’s optimistic expression immediately turned to one of distaste, his face scrunching up. He wasn’t much of a drinker, and his current tolerance stretched as far as whiskey on a good day. He’d never liked tequila.

Sam gently put the drink down, his mouth forming a small, embarrassed smile. ‘How _much_ tequila?’

‘Who keeps track anymore?’ Jess giggled, waving a hand. She brought her glass to her lips once again, and Sam laughed.

‘How do you, just….do that?’ He stumbled over his words, gesturing to her drink.

‘What, drink alcohol?’ Jess mumbled teasingly, eyebrows raised. ‘What _do_ you like, anyway?’

‘My scale runs from West Coast Cooler to whiskey,’ Sam said. ‘Shots are good.’

Jess grinned, pushed herself up from the table once more. ‘I will go order us some shots, then, Sam Winchester.’

True to her word, Jess returned with a little tray of shots, and she could no longer hold back all of her questions.

She tossed around her hair with her hand before raising an eyebrow. ‘Sooo…..how was your date?’

Sam threw back a shot as she spoke.

Jess scrunched up her nose. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘Nope,’ Sam grinned, dropping the shot glass down onto the table. ‘Second date next week.’

Jess slammed her hands down on the table. ‘No way.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ Sam grinned. ‘Dean’s furious that I can get a date and he can’t.’

‘What’d you do? Where’d you guys go?’ Jess rambled, smiling from ear to ear.

‘Alright, so,’ Sam began, leaning forward on the table. ‘He had this whole thing planned out for weeks, apparently. We went to some, uh, comedy show, first. I forget who the dude was but it was actually really good. We went back to his house, after, and just….talked, I guess. Ate food. Watched TV. Played on his PS2.’

‘Talked.’ Jess grinned into her glass. ‘That’s all you guys got up to, huh?’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ Sam pushed at a shot glass on the table, rolling his eyes. ‘Seriously, we just talked about his, uh- well, we talked about _ourselves,_ for starters, and our families, and all that other crap.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Jess said, leaning on her palm. ‘What’s his situation?’

‘Just as shitty as mine, actually,’ Sam said. Jess exhaled, frowned a little. ‘He’s the youngest, so at least we have that in common. Three brothers. The Dad, uh...he up and left years ago, so the oldest - Michael - had to look after them.’

‘Were his brothers….like, were they _okay?_ To Gabe, I mean?’ Jess stumbled over here words, trying not to sound insensitive while trying to get her point across. She quickly waved her hand. ‘I mean, all of this really isn’t any of my business, so if Gabe-’

Sam smiled softly. ‘He doesn’t mind. He jokes about it a lot, you know? Plus, I mean - you guys are friends, so.’

‘I never wanted to- to ask about it,’ Jess mumbled, looking off to the side. ‘’Cos, I mean, we’ve all heard things about- well, uh…’

‘Lucifer? Yeah,’ Sam said, scratching the side of his face before pushing back his hair. ‘Gabe mentioned him.’

‘What’s his deal?’ Jess said with a cautious undertone.

‘He was, uh, he was….’ Sam shook his head, trying to find the words to say. ‘Long story short, he got into some bad shit, him and Michael went from bad to worse, Gabe got the Hell out of there, and apparently Lucifer was arrested more than a few times.’

‘For what?’

Sam looked down at the table, fiddled with a shot glass again.

Jess smiled, sat back up straight. ‘It’s okay. I know I already know more than I should.’

‘Yeah, it’s just,’ Sam looked up with a small smile, scratched his head absentmindedly. ‘I don’t wanna ruin things before they get started, y’know? Hell, I’ve barely told him anything about my Dad.’

And at that, Jess tipped her head forward; a fed up gesture, laced with concern. ‘Sam.’

So Sam shook his head, and after a few seconds of consideration, gulped down another shot.

‘I’ll tell him soon,’ Sam assured her, smiling. ‘We have all the time in the world.’

 

—

 

‘Saaaaam.’

Gabe’s voice got louder as he approached the kitchen table, bare feet padding along the floor. Sam didn’t look up, didn’t move, his head tilted down and his eyes scrunched up with a mix of exhaustion and concentration.

Gabe leaned against the doorframe, ankles and arms crossed.

‘Samshine, I finished up an hour ago.’

Sam huffed and shrugged, a small sigh escaping him.

Gabe frowned. ‘I have had a very lonely shower, _and_ a bowl of ice-cream in the time it took you to learn about the religious laws of different states.’

Sam didn’t respond. Gabe took a few short steps to Sam’s side and stood at the table. ‘I caught up on Game of Thrones _without you_.’

Sam shrugged again, and Gabe was suddenly reaching over toward him, pulling the book away from Sam, off the table. ‘That’s it, you jackass, time to put the books away—’

Sam flailed, the first proper response in what seemed like hours, and reached for the book just as Gabe closed it with a loud thump. ‘Gabe, I’m _almost done_ , I promise—’

‘Don’t care.’ Gabe hummed, grinned smugly.

Sam rolled his eyes, letting out an annoyed groan, before dropping his arms onto the table and resting his head against them. Gabe approached his side and sat cross legged on the floor, his forehead resting on Sam’s thigh as he tapped silly drum beats into Sam’s lower leg.

‘You’re going to do awesome on this test, Sam. Don’t stress it.’

Sam yawned, smiling at Gabe’s small gestures. ‘...I guess.’

‘You tired?’ Gabe looked up as Sam lifted his head, the small dark blotches under his eyes far too noticeable for Gabe’s liking, no matter how recently they had come to be.

Sam chuckled. ‘Kinda hungry.’

‘Well, let’s order in some pizza, huh? I’m starving.’ Gabe grinned, pushing himself to his feet with a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed but accompanied by a playful smile. ‘Dude, you just said you ate an entire bowl of ice cream.’

Gabe rolled his eyes, grabbing Sam’s hand and pulling him toward the couch. ‘Don’t shame me for my eating habits! C’mon, I’ll get that shitty pizza with peppers that you like.’

‘Perfect.’ Sam chuckled, pulling Gabe back and planting a kiss on his temple before falling dramatically onto the couch. ‘Thank you.’

Gabe fell asleep first; the clock was nearing the 4a.m. mark and Sam was still wearing off the half a dozen black coffees he’d downed in an attempt to get into focus. Gabe, however, had spent the good part of two hours trying to pull Sam away from his notes with useless bribes of pancakes and video games, or beer and Strictly Come Dancing—he’d gotten Sam into the show, and Dean had almost spontaneously combusted upon seeing their DVR, previously chock full of wrestling and the British version Top Gear, now overwritten with whole seasons of it—but to no avail. Within an hour of their collapsing together in a heap on the sofa and stuffing themselves with pizza, Gabe’s face was buried under Sam’s arm, his breathing even, his posture and expression relaxed. Sam gently maneuvered himself free with a fond smile, grabbed his coat and his keys, and walked home.

Gabe’s previous comments of “you can stay the night if it’s late,” and “I just want you to be safe,” were ringing in his ears.

 

—

 

‘Sam?’

Sam stopped as he emerged from the bathroom, hair wet and stuck to his skin. He rubbed at it with a towel, looking in the mirror. ‘Mhm?’

Dean stood at the table, knuckles pressed down into the wood. ‘Why the Hell have you been skippin’ therapy?’

Sam looked at his brother, and then quickly back to the mirror. ‘What? I haven’t.’

Dean rolled his eyes. ‘You’re a shitty liar.’

‘You’re a shitty bad cop.’ Sam looked at Dean with raised eyebrows as he approached the table, towel discarded.

Sam sighed in defeat, rolling his eyes as Dean glared. ‘..Great. Fine. I’ll go next week.’

Dean’s expression seemed to soften a bit, and he rounded the table. ‘I didn’t tell you to go, I asked why you stopped.’

Sam smiled at Dean— or tried to, anyway, as he rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘Dude. It’s nothing.’

‘Oh?’ Dean began, eyes wide and brows raised in expectation. ‘How’s the new guy?’

Sam shrugged. ‘He’s fine.’

 _Liar,_ he told himself.

‘How are _you_?’ Dean leaned back against the tabletop, arms crossed.

Another shrug, a little less wholehearted. ‘I’m fine.’

And Sam really _wasn’t_ , both he and Dean knew it, but Sam was reverting back to a time where if he said he was fine, Dean believed him.

Back then, there was less hovering. Dean never woke him up or followed him around _just to be sure._ They laughed and smiled and talked more.

Dean groaned. ‘Every time you say something’s _fine_ I lose ten years of my lifespan. Use another word, ‘cause it’s drivin’ me nuts.’

Sam threw out his arms to his sides, all false movements and sarcasm. ‘I’m fan _tastic._ There. Is that higher up on the positivity scale?’

Sam rolled his eyes, moving to grab an apple from a bowl on the countertop nearby.

‘Stop being a smartass for two seconds, man. I’m beggin’ ya.’ Dean sounded different, now; he went from angry to careful, aware he was treading on glass shards, walking along a tightrope over the things that Sam had seen and heard and done.

Sam paused, shrugged. ‘I just have to get used to him, that’s all.’

‘Who? New guy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s his name?’ And there was Dean’s normal tone, once again. The balancing act was over.

Sam bit his tongue, murmured the name with practiced professionalism and care. ‘Uriel.’

Dean groaned, rolled his eyes. ‘Ugh, gross. Sounds pretentious as hell.’

‘He can be. But he’s doing his job, I guess.’

That apparently wasn’t the response Dean was looking for, however, for he stared at Sam, waiting.

But before he could argue any further, a memory came rushing back into Dean’s mind, and he pointed at Sam. ‘Oh, yeah! Gabe called.’

‘Uh, why?’

‘Cause _you_ weren’t answering your phone!’

Sam furrowed his brows, shrugged, uncomfortably shifting his weight from one leg to the other. ‘I never answer my phone. It’s always on silent.’

‘Well, answer it when he calls, ‘cause he sounded on the verge of a freakout.’

Sam thought back to the last time he’d seen Gabe, and paused. He remembered stepping out of Gabe’s apartment, his phone a weight in his back pocket, the night sky drowning out light. ‘Oh.’

‘Oh?’

Sam scratched the back of his neck; an awkward gesture. ‘I, ah, walked home last night after study and forgot to leave him a note, or a text or, uh….anything.’

‘Dammit, Sammy,’ Dean sighed, with both annoyance and worry. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

‘It was four in the morning! You were asleep.’

It was the answer Sam always gave; a variation of _you would’ve been annoyed with me,_ every time _._ It was easier to explain. Sam liked walking at night, and walking alone. Warm cars and conversation were great, sure, but they were restricting.

Sam was almost positive that Dean wouldn’t get it, because he sure as hell hadn’t acknowledged it as a kid.

‘I’d rather drive you home and be pissed for an hour in the mornin’ than have you get hit by a car.’ Dean grinned up at Sam, but there was a hint of worry in his tone, a mask of concern over his features.

Sam finished his apple and tossed it in the general direction of the trashcan, not checking where it landed. ‘Yes, _mom._ ’

‘That’s not a-’ Dean rolled his eyes as he moved past Sam, glancing quickly at the clock with a finger pointed in warning. ‘Whatever! Just- Call me next time. And call your boyfriend before he has a hemorrhage.’

As Dean turned the corner of the room, disappearing behind the wall, Sam laughed. ‘He has a name!’

‘Yeah, and his entire extended family, including him, is named after freakin’ angels!’ 


	2. Chapter 2

****

**part ii.**

_ “He struggled with himself, too. I saw it— I heard it.  _

_ I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew _ _   
_ _ no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.” _

_ — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness _

  
  
  


Sam got a new therapist. 

Either Uriel had other clients or Sam was too hard to handle, with his glares and his eye-rolling and his eagerness to launch himself out the third story window—it was probably the latter. If Sam had to see himself refuse to talk about the problems that he’d clearly been told he has, whole stories made of a shrug and the clothes that pulled just a little too tightly on his skin, he would’ve made a run for it, too. 

Anna’s words, her constant motivating speeches lodged themselves in Sam’s brain, as if they hadn’t originally come in one ear and gone out the other. 

_ ‘You’re worth more than anyone thinks,’ she would say, leaned against the window with crossed arms and a sad, verging on pitiful expression. ‘And you know that. If you didn’t think you were worth something, you wouldn’t be here, Sam.’ _

_ ‘My brother makes me go,’ Sam repeated with downcast eyes and a furrowed brow.  _

_ ‘What does he do? Does he drive you up to the door?’ _

_ ‘For the first few weeks, yeah.’ _

_ ‘And now?’ _

_ ‘I walk.’ _

_ Anna smiled. ‘If you didn’t want to be here, you would’ve walked the other way.’ _

_ ‘So?’ _

_ ‘So you’re  _ worth the world,  _ Sam. You just need to see it.’ _

And on that Wednesday afternoon, a few months since Anna’s abrupt departure, came a new sign on the door, a newly-painted room, and a new psychologist. 

‘Good afternoon, Samuel.’

She spoke formally. There was an everlasting, unwavering smile on her face and a forced sweetness and sincerity in her tone.

She had called him  _ Samuel. _

‘It’s Sam,’ he said like it should be common knowledge, taking a seat in his chair.

But it wasn’t  _ his  _ chair; not anymore. Gone was the creaky, blue office chair he’d come to know. In it’s place was something heavy, wooden with soft padding, wrapped in leather. 

It was comfortable, and he could slouch without it making a sound. 

Everything was too new, and it was terrifying. 

She smiled, nodding. ‘We’ll get started, then.’

She shuffled papers on her desk, flicked through them, and glanced at Sam every once in awhile. 

They were presumably his patient files, his previous therapy files, his  _ everything-that’s-wrong-with-a-smart-college-boy _ files, including everything you did and didn’t want to know. He wondered if Dean had ever read them, and then wondered if he’d even want to. 

‘Well. It’s lovely to meet you, Sam. My name is Naomi. I have only moved here recently, and I’m a specialist in dealing with physical and emotional abuse, both in adults and children, as well as mental illnesses and disorders such as depression, anxiety, Borderline Personality disorder, and ADHD, among a long list of others.’

Sam hadn’t prepared himself for the therapist introduction speech. He hadn’t been prepared for one in a long time. 

He answered all her questions, which in fairness, was more than he’d done for Uriel, but significantly less than what he’d provided Anna. It began with the payment sliding scale - Uriel had been thirty dollars a session, Naomi surprisingly only twenty five - where she asked of his job status, education, and of Dean. 

Then she moved onto him, with less-than-subtle glances at the pile of papers on the desk. 

The only amount of comfort he’d gotten was when she’d asked Sam, on a scale of one to ten, how was his relationship with Dean, how he was doing in college, his relationship with his Mother and his Father. Did he have a partner? Did he have hobbies? How were his lecturers?

When he answered “college” with a swift 6 on the scale and “mother and father” with an even swifter seven, Naomi paused. Lifted an eyebrow. 

She set down her papers and interlocked her hands. 

‘Six and seven are pretty high up, Sam.’

Sam nodded, almost frantically, ignoring the fact that his 14 year old self would have ranked his parents a four and his 18 year old self would’ve given a two.

Naomi had her files and her doctor’s records; there were a dozen school counsellors on call for all the Sam Winchester information she needed. 

She didn’t need Sam in order to hear about it. In fact, she didn’t need to hear about it at all.

 

-

 

Halfway through breakfast, which consisted of a buttered bagel and some orange juice, a large brown envelope was slammed down in front of Sam.

Hazel eyes met green, confusion with excitement, and Sam spoke. ‘What’s that?’

Dean’s finger slided across the paper, toward the stamp, and he was shaking. 

‘Holy shit.’ Sam dropped his food. 

Beside him, Dean was practically jumping up on down, from one foot to the other. 

Meanwhile, Sam was speechless, frozen still. 

The Stanford stamp was in the top corner, but instead of being addressed to Sam, Dean’s name was written in the small white box. 

‘Holy fucking  _ shit _ !’ Sam launched from his chair, hands running through his hair, and Dean was tearing open the envelope with more speed and haste than Sam had ever witnessed before. Within seconds, there was a letter in Dean’s hands.  

He skimmed through it with hopeful curiosity, and then he saw it. 

_ Congratulations! _

There was screaming and shouting and hugging for a good five minutes before either man could find where they’d left their words. 

‘What the fuck- How the-’ Sam stuttered, the grin on his face unfading, a small laugh escaping him. ‘You sent your application in last year!’

‘I know, holy shit, I mean,  _ I know _ -’ Dean clenched the letter in his fist, slammed it down on the table and paced around the floor with frantic gesticulations. ‘I had barely anything on it! I mean, I had the different grades from schools, and they were okay, and all the, uh, online courses I took! Those classes I went to before you started here! Those ones at the education institute! Maybe I, ah, had enough on there-’

He paused, looked back at Sam and they were barrelling into each other again, Dean rubbing his knuckles into Sam’s hair like they were 16 and 12 again and Dean had gotten that date, or Sam stood up to bullies, or they went out without their father to buy soda and sweets and rent movies because nobody could stop them. 

Dean was running to his bedroom in seconds, grabbing his phone. ‘I’m callin’ Cas.’

‘Uh, why?’

‘I just got accepted to fucking  _ Stanford!  _ Y’know, me? Dean Winchester, the guy without a credit to his name, destined to be a failure?’

‘You were never destined to be a failure-’

‘That’s what Ms. White said to me after I barely scraped past a fail in history, but look at me now!’

dean takes out phone

‘We’re going out celebrating, man.’

‘It’s not even-’

‘Not  _ now _ , you ass.’ ‘Hey. Cas. Yeah. You know that bar a few blocks from us? Yeah, the Brookhouse- Meet us there at nine tonight. No reason. You’ll see.’

Dean took the phone from his ear, dropping it onto the table.

‘Holy shit.’ His voice was a whisper. 

Sam shook his head in disbelief, letting out a small chuckle. ‘Yeah.’

‘I should probably go read this letter now.’

Sam laughed. ‘Yeah, go do that.’

 

— 

 

Sam had never forgotten assignments. Or homework. 

He’d never forgotten much of anything, in fact. 

So on that Friday morning, as he entered the lecture hall, an anxious air surrounding it, Sam remembered why he never let himself forget. 

An oral presentation had been assigned - the words rang in his head like bells, like he was so incredibly awful for forgetting to write it down. The rest of the class had it done, USB’s on their desks for slideshows, assortments of green and pink cards to read from. 

Sam sat with his books, his dread, and the numbing feeling that he hadn’t anything done. 

Between the time he arrived and the time the lecture began, Sam wrote up a page and a half of barely-relevant notes and slapped them on a powerpoint, heart already thumping in a terrifying way when, at last, his name was called from the list. 

It did not go well. In fact, that’s an understatement. 

Gabe had to physically pry his hands from the counter of the bathroom sink afterwards, where his whole body was dancing with tremors, his head bowed forward.

‘You didn’t tell me we had an assignment,’ Sam said, voice thick, clouded with the last shreds of fear, overtaken by embarrassment and dread of the outside world, of his grade, of his lecturer’s face. 

She knew Sam hadn’t had the assignment ready. Sam knew she knew. And every time her frown worsened, and a long sigh was dragged out from between her lips, Sam’s hands shook ever-so-slightly more until he had to stick them in his pockets for fear of knocking his laptop from the table. 

Gabe slid his hand into Sam’s and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t comforting. ‘I thought you were on top of it. You’re like, the star kid of the class.’ Gabe’s voice was quiet and careful. Sam hated it. 

‘She was so fucking-’ Sam’s voice wavered, and he swallowed back the knot creeping up his throat. ‘You should’ve just seen her face. It was awful, she just- She’s so fucking disappointed in me. I spent months trying to, tryna’ work on what she thought of me and now-’

‘It was just one assignment, it’s okay. It won’t even affect your grade.’ Gabe pulled Sam toward him and Sam fell against his shoulder, sturdy arms squeezing his middle, a way to ground him. 

Sam turned his head, pressed it into the side of Gabe’s neck. 

‘Nobody remembers each other’s presentations,’ Gabe murmured with enough strength for it to stick, lodge itself in Sam’s brain, and  _ somehow  _ Gabe always knew the right things to say. ‘She knows your standard. Everyone has a slip up. If she treats you like shit because of this, she’s an asshole.’

It took fifteen minutes and a lot of encouragement, but soon, Gabe was driving Sam home.

 

— 

 

Sam faintly remembered telling Dean he was going to apply for a job at some bar who was looking to hire. 

He’d come here to do that. But apparently, looking at the whiskey in his hand and the empty shot glasses, that isn’t quite what he’d done. 

He wasn’t necessarily  _ drunk _ ; Sam usually knew his limits. But the buzz in his head had long since disappeared and the ball of of anxiety working it’s way from his stomach to his throat was now but a numb sensation. 

A group of kids from his study group were in the corner. They were falling on top of one another and their speech was slurred and barely comprehensible, but they were laughing harder than Sam had ever heard them. 

They’d fucked up their presentations, too, Sam recalled. Apparently, this bar was filled with kids who weren’t up to Stanford standard on the best of days.

Sam barely drank. Sure, a beer here and there or a glass of wine for some special occasion, but his habits were kept under control. 

Until school. Until grade drops, until the class’s snickers were past the point of hidden and his lecturer was shaking her head in disbelief and anger. 

And with that thought, Sam swallowed back the last of his drink. 

Dean found him walking down the sidewalk at an unknown time that night. All Sam knew was that the sky was dark, the streetlamps were glowing orange, and that he wasn’t the only person stumbling down this street. 

The familiar screech of brakes was what Sam recognised first. Then, the heavy footsteps coming his way. 

Lastly, the firm grip on the back of his hoodie, and the smell of something old, rustic, mixed with oil and leather. 

‘Sam- Sam, come  _ on-’  _ Dean was growling, quiet but fierce, and Sam realized his feet had planted themselves in the sidewalk like they’d been there all along. 

After a few seconds of bleary-eyed thought, Sam turned, following his brother with sluggish steps. 

‘Nobody told me we had an assignment,’ Sam muttered, falling into the backseat of the Impala. 

‘Shut up,’ Dean snapped, slamming the car door, pulling away

Under different circumstances, Sam would’ve felt his stomach fall if Dean slammed the door and used that tone, the one that seemed to run in their family, passed down from father to son, but the blissful numbness had not left him just yet. 

‘’m sorry,’ Sam muttered, slouching against the backseat. 

‘It’s fine.’ Cold and sharp. Dean’s special way of showing you you’ve done something wrong. 

‘How’d you, uh, how’d you find me?’ Sam asked, pausing to find the correct words. 

Dean glanced into the mirror. ‘Tracker on your phone.’

‘Uh- Why d’you, uh…’ Sam was cursing himself, begging his brain to work. 

‘Doesn’t matter, Sammy.’

And there it was; the one word that made everything so painfully fine, no matter the circumstances. 

So Sam closed his eyes, and drifted. 

 

— 

  
  


‘Dean told me you’re looking for a job.’

Naomi was looking at him again. Expectantly. Just like everyone else had done for the last month and a half.

Sam looked up. ‘Uh, when did he-’

‘How did that go for you?’ Naomi cut in, smiling, leaning forward; expectant.

‘It was fine.’

Sam’s all-too-quick response gave him away; his tight smile and shaky nod of the head, arms wound tight around his ribs.

Naomi sighed, but it was the patient kind, and Sam appreciated it. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, Sam.’

He shrunk a little further down in his chair, shoulders just slightly hunched. ‘’m not lying.’

‘So there was no...incident?’

_ Incident.  _

Sam knew that Naomi already had the whole story from Dean, no doubt, and this was her way of having Sam “ _ accept himself _ ”.

But he wouldn’t just lay down arms and accept all the help he could get because he slipped again, and now he was stuck between other people’s lines of decency and charity.

What did they want from him, when Sam was already giving all he had to the world, for it to swallow him up and demand more? He’d been good for months,  _ months,  _ and now everyone was acting like the world was ending and Sam had been the cause, the ticking time bomb.

His arms unwound themselves from his torso and his hands curled into fists. ‘This is supposed to be confidential.’

Naomi was getting impatient, Sam’s lack of response setting off a flame. ‘It is, Sam, but I cannot  _ help you  _ if you don’t work with me-’

‘Did Dean tell you? He did, right?’ Sam knew the answer already, and was slowly sitting up in his chair; alert, awake, cautious.

‘If I’m going to help you get through this, I need to know these things, Sam.’

Sam scoffed, because  _ she  _ didn’t need to know  _ anything,  _ and threw up his eyes. ‘This is  _ bullshit _ -’ 

Naomi was speaking softly now, and that goddamn everlasting smile wasn’t much for consolation. ‘This is your brother being concerned about your well being and wanting to help you.’

Sam paused; considered it. Naomi knew she could get to Sam in practically any way, on any topic, if Dean was thrown into the mix, and she used it to her advantage as frequently she asked how his day was. Eventually, he shrugged, fed up with Naomi, and this room, and the whole notion that there is no pride in therapy, no secrecy. He spoke quickly, mumbled. ‘Yeah, okay. I had a little too much to drink. Lesson learned.’

Naomi knew she had plucked his strings just right and leaned into the desk, trying her luck. ‘Your brother mentioned something about an, um...assignment? Is that right?’

Sam sighed heavily, the quick exhale of air met with a tight smile that screamed  _ you know nothing about me. _ ‘Jesus Christ, the whole point of this shit is for nothing to leave this room. Right?’

Naomi nodded. ‘Right. Nothing leaves this room. You know that. Your brother is just trying to help.’

The words echoed. Sam thought of how Dean could barely look at him the next day for fear that he’d disappear and the guilt rose in his stomach. ‘I had some presentation I forgot, I screwed it up, kind of forgot to, y’know,  _ drink responsibly. _ ’

Naomi’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘Why did you go drinking?’

Sam shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘Was it to forget?’

‘Probably.’

A pause.

‘Does the presentation directly affect your grade in any way?’

And for a brief moment, Sam didn’t know where Naomi was going with this question and felt it rude to withhold an answer. 

He shuffled around in his seat. ‘Uh, I don’t think so. Just one of those things teachers do to see what you know, how you’re progressing.’

‘If it wasn’t important, why did you react so negatively?’

And then Sam recognised it, knew where Naomi had been going all along; the question that always ended every post-collapse conversation. 

And the reply flew from Sam’s mouth without his permission. ‘Everything’s important.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Everything happens for a reason.’ It’s what Sam had believed for practically his whole life, that every one of his actions had unforeseeable consequences, that those consequences would always be bad, and that it was  _ always  _ his fault.

‘When was the first time you thought that?’ Naomi’s smile had fallen into a tight line.

He was seven years old, Sam recalled with newly-established vividness. He was barely a child and had asked what his mother was like; why did she have to die? 

‘Dunno,’ Sam said to Naomi in a semi-present drone.

It was the second time Dean had ever shouted at him, the second time he’d been locked in his bedroom from the outside by his father and left alone, and the first time he wished he’d never been born so Dean could have a mother and John could have a wife. 

Three years later, Sam heard the term  _ self-sacrificial  _ and thought  _ wow, there’s a word to describe it. _

But he did not tell Dean, nor his father, for his room was cold and barren and all he could play with were his bedsheets and his sanity.

 

— 

 

Dean was freaking out, and over the last week Sam began to consider that normal, what with the new array of deodorants and aftershaves stacked in their sink cabinet, and the new leather jacket, and the unending speeches about all that could go wrong.

It had taken four months, but Dean had asked Cas on a date. Unsurprisingly, Cas agreed. Gabe and Sam had stood away from the two and rolled their eyes at every wringing of the hands or stuttered sentence.

Two of the most confident people Sam had ever known, assured in their abilities and of what they wanted, were standing in front of each other and making fools of themselves over a dinner date.

A week later and the day arrived, and as was expected, Dean was fretting; he fixed his hair, washed away the hair gel and then did it all over again, changed between three leather jackets, and asked Sam two dozen times if he’d overdone it.

Sam answered with a firm  _ no _ , waiting until Dean turned away to roll his eyes.

He left within minutes to pick Cas up at his apartment, and promised to be home by midnight, as if Sam was a concerned mother.

Dean didn’t arrive home until four. Sam was pretending to be asleep by then, as his dreams terrorized by nightmares, scratches at the window, and noises at the front door.

The next morning, running on an hour and a half’s sleep and two mugs of coffee, Sam asked how it was.

When Dean smiled into his coffee and muttered  _ great _ , using that tone he preserved for when things went amazingly, Sam learned not to be surprised by his brother’s sudden disappearances every few days. All he lost was a few hours sleep without the ever-present steady breathing next door, but gained his brother’s constant happiness. He preferred familiar smiles and chuckles to broken unconsciousness, anyway.

 

— 

 

‘We’ve been making incredible progress, Sam.’

It was sunny outside for the first time in weeks; the sky was a bright blue, cloudless, and the sun shone through the window, making the office look just a little warmer. Naomi appeared to have redecorated. What was once just barren walls and a creaky wooden floorboard was now bursting with colour and the contents of at least a few IKEAs. There were colourful bookshelves and wooden dressers and coat racks, but on top of it all there were photographs. Framed pictures of Naomi and her friends, family. Her certificates and degrees were hanging from the walls, a dreamcatcher on the back of the door as you walked inside, a few stimming and fidgeting toys in a box on her desk. 

It reminded Sam of Anna, of her old office. 

And Naomi wasn’t a perfect replacement, but she might have been the next best thing.

Sam nodded slowly. ‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t you think so?’ Naomi grinned, cocked her head.

‘I guess.’

Naomi paused. ‘You sound unsure.’

Sam had gotten slightly better at tellimg people about how he felt and no longer felt his pride collapsing for doing so. He smacked his lips, bringing up a hand, running it through his hair. ‘I just feel the same.’

And although Naomi knew a lot about Sam, enough to consider his issue open for discussion, she didn’t know about John.

Sam barely mentioned him, and the only reason why is that when he considered it, went to say the words, they didn’t come out and it felt as if he couldn’t breathe, lungs knotting and pushing down on his heart to do more, work harder.

Naomi shuffled the papers on her desk, took out a pen, waiting until Sam was  _ seeing  _ her inside of seeing past her before speaking.  ‘Well, we can work on that, too. But first: how was your day?’

 

— 

 

_ Sam’s arms felt like they were burning. And furthermore, they were glowing, golden light revealed from behind skin, curling around his veins and pushing up from his bones. _

_ Dean was in front of him, hands held out in caution, eyes wide in disbelief. A man sat in a chair next to him, handcuffed and bloody; he was slouching, clearly exhausted. _

_ Sam was crying, and he couldn’t stop it; his eyes red rimmed, and his chest tight, and maybe he was dying. Maybe this, the feeling of every single thing in your body either burning or numb or just completely shutting down, was what dying felt like. Because his arms were on fire but his feet were stuck in place, his legs heavy, his ribs closing in around his heart as if to protect instead of do harm. His hands were trembling, blood dripping down to the concrete floor from a long line in his palm and his head was floating in between the feeling of complete numbness and complete agony. _

_ ‘Think about it,’ Dean began, taking a small step closer. ‘Think about what we know. Pulling souls from hell- Curing demons- Hell,  _ ganking a hellhound _. We have enough knowledge on our side to turn the tide, here.’ _

_ Dean paused. _

_ ‘I can’t do it without you.’ _

_ Sam shook his head, and the miniscule action made his vision blur. He seemed to find his voice once again, however weak, and a guilty smile, lined with anger, crept onto his face. ‘You can barely do it with me. I mean, you think I screw up everything I try. You- You think I need a chaperone, remember?’ _

_ Dean shook his head. ‘C’mon, man, that’s not what I meant-’ _

_ ‘That is exactly what you meant.’ And if Sam could find the strength, he’d be furious. _

_ ‘You want to know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was?’ He pointed across the room, and could feel his throat tightening with the conflict waging war in his mind and in his veins. ‘It was how many times I’d let you down.’ _

_ Dean’s attempt at staying strong broke, and his expression crumpled, jaw falling slightly. _

_ ‘I can’t do that again.’ _

_ And then, for a while, things went a little blurry; Sam kept talking, rambling like his life depended on it and all his secret thoughts were spilling out, all of his doubts and uncontrollable fears slipping from his lips in an attempt to have Dean understand. This wasn’t just the trials, or the redemption, or the purification. This was decades worth of fear and injustice and anger all rolled into one. _

_ Dean shouted, words of encouragement and reassurance and plain anger at the fact that Sam was this sacrificial, and Sam ducked his head to the side, knowing one conversation couldn’t roll back all of this. They couldn’t fix Heaven, or Hell, and Sam was too far gone to be fixed at all- _

_ But Dean was so  _ convincing _. And goddammit, he made Sam want to try when he’d had given up on trying altogether. Sam had accepted this. He had been ready to die. _

_ ‘How do I stop?’ _

_ And then, just like when they were younger, Dean was tending to Sam’s wounds; wrapping a cloth around his hand, pressing down on it ever so lightly, this is real, you’re real- _

_ ‘We will figure it out, okay?’ Dean was smiling, hopeful and bright, and how could he do this? Smile when his brother almost willingly sacrificed himself in the name of the greater good and of redemption, while the angels waged war and the King of Hell sat to their side in a trance, barely a demon at all? ‘Just like we always do.’ _

_ Dean’s arms wrapped around Sam and pulled him down, warmth and familiarity gathering in the space where they stood. Sam’s glowing veins faded, and he felt it disappear somewhere deep down in his core, retreating, it’s battle lost. _

_ Dean smiled. _

_ Sam’s head exploded with unimaginable pain before his knees buckled. _

And then he woke up.

He no longer came out of these dreams with a small flinch, eyes opening. After a few months it changed to jumping, pushing himself away from the bed and often onto the floor, his breath laboured, hands shaking and head hurting, a trickle of blood running down from his nose.

And always,  _ always,  _ a little flash of blue; lightning, barely there.

This routine replayed perfectly, and Sam was pushing himself to the other side of the bed in seconds, willing his mind to go numb, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand frantically, destroying any evidence that it actually happened at all; maybe it was a dream, a sleepy illusion.

But Sam quickly remembered where he was, recognizing the warm body jolting awake beside him, and the starkly different wallpaper visible in the moonlight.

He’d stayed over at Gabe’s that night. Dean and Cas were in Cas’ room, next door. They had all gone out for pizza, and Sam remembered laughing a lot, feeling happy for the first time that week.

Gabe was awake now, and the small bedside lamp was illuminating the room, providing a dim yellow glow. His arm landed on Sam’s upper arm, squeezing gently. He pushed himself up to look at Sam directly.

‘Sam? You okay, there?’ He pressed his nose into Sam’s shoulder.

Sam was held up by his arm, head tilted down to the floor. Gabe’s words went over his head like he hadn’t said a thing, and eventually, Sam slowed his breath, although he was still shaking all over and blood was now dripping freely down onto the bedsheets.

‘Sam?’ Gabe sat up on the bed, angled toward the edge, his hand grasping Sam’s. ‘What’s wrong? Why is your- Will I get Dean?’

Before Sam could answer, Gabe was pulling his hand free and hopping off the bed. 

Sam reached out, stopped it. ‘No, don’t- Don’t get him. It’s just a nosebleed. I’ll go clean it up.’

He stood on shaky, untrustworthy legs, pressing a small kiss to Gabe’s temple as he passed; a confirmation.

‘Sorry about your sheets,’ Sam whispered with a weak smile, and Gabe rolled his eyes.

 

— 

 

Naomi always knew that things were bad if Sam appeared in her office unscheduled. He was here because there was something that couldn’t wait until Wednesday, that made him push all of his work aside. 

Sam knew that Naomi was aware of all of this, this routine, and he didn’t care. 

‘I, uh, have these...dreams. More like visions? But, I mean, they haven’t happened, so-’

Sam was shaking, and he could feel it; mostly in his hands but also in his jiggling leg, and he gesticulated to make it go unnoticed.

Naomi made a noise in the back of her throat, something of surprise, and narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you have them often?’

Sam nodded frantically. ‘Yeah, every couple days, sometimes only a couple times a month.’

‘What happens during them?’

Sam could feel the disappointment building, because there was  _ no way  _ that Naomi would actually believe him. Despite this, he carried on.

‘They’re, uh, weird. It’s always me and Dean, but sometimes, there’s- there’s my Dad, or people I’ve never seen before. In one of them I was driving my brother’s car and my Dad was shouting at me for not...killing him, I think. And Dean was bleeding out in the back seat, but I was fine.’

Naomi nodded while she spoke, confusion and concern lining her tone. ‘What did your father say?’

Sam inhaled slowly, preparing himself to speak. ‘He mentioned a demon, I think? But I dunno if that was symbolic or not. And I said how we had some gun, I think I called it a Colt.’

‘Has your Dad ever mentioned these things to you? Maybe they’re memories.’ Naomi held out a hand, palm up; a silent question.

‘ _ No.  _ No, Dean has never- It’s never been like  _ that. _ ’ Sam’s response was fast, his voice wobbling.

_ Dean has never died. He’s never bled out in the back seat.  _

‘Tell me about your other dreams, Sam.’

Sam looked at his lap. ‘It’s not gonna do anything.’

He didn’t know how he could describe them. He didn’t know how to explain that almost every one of them ends with him  _ dying _ , and Dean is always there, and they solidify the fact that Sam would give his life for his brother any day, dream or not.

In a dream, he asked Dean how to stop. And whether by coincidence or a stroke of deja vu,  Sam had asked his brother that exact same question three years before with lines running up and down his arms, rounding his torso, a bloody tissue discarded, razor in hand. And Dean had known the answer, each time.

Naomi smiled; a hopeful one she’d been practicing. ‘It doesn’t have to, but we can try.’

 

— 

 

Sam examined his body one day, pausing in the mirror after emerging from the shower in a cloud of steam.

He didn’t acknowledge himself much, hadn’t done so for years. He didn’t think he needed to, but a space at the back of his mind also thought he needed to face the music, and so, he avoided it; avoided his body, beaches, swimming pools, gyms. 

But it had been months, years, and Sam couldn’t let himself completely forget.

They looked worse than he remembered; Sam thought he’d been clever about it, keeping it to one side of his body, not letting them overlap and being without the right tools to leave proper scars. Apparently, just as his memory had apparently fizzled out, so had his judgement.

There was a line running down his left ribs, falling diagonally, but discreet. On his right side, however, there were lines criss-crossing, falling into one another and dragged lazily along. He remembered doing these, among the haze. His razors were blunt from use and the blades wouldn’t come out of their holdings, so he just did what was usual and pulled the full razor along, leaving faint groupings of four. But they were worn, and nothing was happening, so he got sloppier; the once-clean skin of his sides turned into a lined mess of desperation and hurried hurt. He had walked around with arms pressed tight to his sides for the new few days but considered it appropriate pain. He should have expected it.

They were the first mistakes in a long list.

It had taken Dean a year and a half to find out, and he still pinned guilt on himself all these years later. An obsession with blame had made it’s way into Dean’s mind and had lingered there ever since. The questions had been torture - is it because Mom died? Is it because they always move? Did Dean shout at him too much, too often? Was Dad worse than usual?

All the questions had been answered with a solid no, but of course, Sam  _ had  _ become a master of lies in the years he’d been scarring his flesh.

It had taken months of arguing, tears, slamming doors, and refused therapy sessions, but Dean finally understood that Sam didn’t know  _ why  _ he did what he did. It helped. It worked. It did something different, and although it was a bad thing to do, Sam felt he had no other choice.

 

— 

 

The first thing Sam realized that night was that he’d survived the year. For all of his hardships and troubles and slip-ups, he’d made it. 

And now he was met with his reward; bright lights and smoke machines, beer pong and drunken young adults, a party advertised as the best way to end the year. But if that was true, why was anxiety stirring in his chest?

Sam knew he had nothing to worry about. Gabe was holding his hand, as Cas and Dean were doing behind them. His friends -  _ family  _ \- were here, and they were fine, so he’d be fine.

And he  _ was  _ fine; he had a beer, talked to people from his classes, laughed with Gabe and kissed him under the white flashing lights that made everything look like a series of photographs. They watched the sun go down in a fight between pale pink and blue, swirling together until both colours was pushed down under the skyline. They cheered when they spotted Dean and Cas making out behind the speakers, and finally collapsed onto the floor, Gabe’s head in Sam’s lap. 

And everything, in a miraculous twist, was  _ fine. _

Perhaps that was the whole problem.

Because three hours in, after Dean and Cas had stumbled off to God knows where and quite a few people had collapsed onto the floor in a mix of exhaustion and drunkenness, the anxiety Sam felt was close to eating him alive.

This kind of anxiousness was different to what he felt most of the time. On days like today, Sam considered that kind simple, easy to swallow and keep down. This kind was a whole new level, for it got caught in stomach and his throat and his lungs and seemed to cut off every necessity. Gabe’s touch now felt foreign, this party too bright and loud, the night sky too dark and ready to swallow Sam up. His mind went blank and his vision blurry. This was the kind he couldn’t ignore, as hard as he tried.

The night found Sam in an empty bedroom, some time after that, but he didn’t remember moving. All he knew, now, was that he sat on a double bed, shoes kicked off, and the window was open. Wind rushed in every few seconds, sending a chill through his body, before making its departure. He was trembling, worse than usual, and the party was still as loud as ever, muffled by the door.

Sam sat in a state of bliss for a long, long time, eyes focused on the floor until they fell shut.

He felt as if this had happened before, but there were less fresh bruises, this time, and less scars, and he wasn’t sitting still in fear of throwing up. 

Sam was here, avoiding everything and everyone at a party he had chosen to go to, because he had felt happy doing so.

And the fact that he’d felt happy was beyond  _ terrifying. _

Some time later, through the haze his mind had fallen into like a safety net, there was a knock on the door; three frantic turns of the handle.

Apparently, Sam had locked the door. He stumbled toward it on heavy legs, unlocking it with weak movements.

He recognised the voice that spoke, but was already back on the bed, cross legged, practically unaware.

‘Sam?’ Cas said, his hushed tone soothing in contrast to the bassy music from outside. Sam heard the click of the door, and footsteps. ‘Dean’s been looking for you.’

With no argument or displeased groan to be heard, Cas sat down on the floor, obstructing Sam’s previously clear line of vision. 

At last, Sam’s eyes became a little less foggy. Cas smiled when Sam met his gaze.

‘Why are you in here?’

Sam shrugged, ran the nails of his right hand up and down his left arm.

Cas was still smiling. ‘Do you want to go home?’

The question caught Sam off-guard; there was no  _ are you okay?  _ or any violent movements. He cleared his throat, noticed it felt slightly raw. ‘I  _ was  _ having fun for the first, uh, while, I guess.’

Cas nodded, encouraged him to continue.

So he did. ‘I didn’t drink a lot, and Gabe didn’t either, so nothing was awkward. It’s just, uh…’

‘Mhm?’ Cas’ tone was hopeful, like he wouldn’t judge a thing coming out of Sam’s mouth.

‘I was  _ really  _ happy, man,’ Sam said in a hushed voice, as he fiddled with a bracelet on his wrist. ‘And it felt, uh…. _ wrong. _ ’

Cas’ eyes widened ever so slightly, and Sam wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t gone through a chain of therapists over the last few years.

‘It’s not...bad, right?’ Sam said, more of a confirmation to himself than a question.‘Everyone has to hurts sometimes. If I don’t- If I’m not hurting, like,  _ at all _ , there’s something wrong.’

Cas paused. Crossed his legs on the floor, leaning back on his hands. ‘Have you hurt yourself lately, Sam?’

And that was one of the questions Sam was dreading, because Cas was his  _ friend,  _ not his councillor, and he shouldn’t even be asking this-

‘Not really.’ The reply leapt from Sam’s mouth like a desperate plea for Cas to stop.

Sam went quiet, and felt guilty, because he shouldn’t lie. 

It was just so much  _ easier  _ than replaying past events _. _

He knew that Cas was still speaking, still watching him, but he wasn’t quite  _ there  _ anymore.

_ Sam’s hangover wasn’t quite as bad as he assumed it would be.  _

_ It was barely there, a gentle thumping and thrumming in his head, and for a second, he felt grateful.  _

_ Then, Sam remembered why his head hurt; drinking, college peers, more drinking, Dean’s firm grip on his shoulder, a tracker on his phone.  _

_ He turned over, sat up with a lot more sophistication than he felt he deserved. A glass of water and two aspirin lay on his table, his phone among them.  _

_ With light steps and returning anxiety, Sam emerged from his room.  _

_ Dean was cooking. The smell was evidence as to it, and for the first time that morning Sam’s stomach rolled with faint nausea. He cleared his throat and scrunched up his nose, making his way to the table. Dean barely acknowledged him, a small flick of the eyes and a nod as he approached.  _

_ Within minutes, the air bursting with awkwardness, Dean dropped a plate of eggs and toast in front of Sam.  _

_ With no food of his own, he sat down at the table, face stern, but just slightly apologetic. _

_ ‘How’re you feeling?’ Dean began, hand covering his mouth slightly, eyes diverted. It sounded as if the words had to be bribed from his lips.  _

_ Sam shrugged, picking up a fork and poking his food with it. ‘Been better, been worse.’ _

_ Dean looked at him, then. Pointed to his hair. ‘Does your head hurt?’ _

_ ‘Nope, it’s fine.’ _

_ Dean tipped his head forward, jaw snapping shut. A silent question.  _

_ ‘Dean. I’m good, I swear. Seriously, I thought that hangovers would be worse.’ He let out a quiet exhale, verging on a laugh. ‘If that’s as bad as hangovers get, I should go get drunk more-’ _

_ The slamming of fists on the wooden table and the pulling back of a chair made Sam jump. Dean was walking around the room with increased pace, pulling on his shoes, fist clenched. _

_ ‘It was a joke, Dean.’ Sam had long since stopped eating, but now he pushed his food to the other side of the table. _

_ Dean’s tone was laced with anger, every movement precise, and designed to let Sam know that he’s pissed. ‘Those kind of jokes stopped being funny years ago, Sam.’ _

_ Sam now lacked the capacity to be sarcastic. He was now focused on making Dean forget this ever happened, keep his brother’s fury subdued. He faced the table, arms folded into his chest, voice but a gentle murmur. ‘Okay. I messed up, I get it. I’m sorry.’ _

_ Within seconds, Sam heard the front door opening, a coat pulled from the rack as it shook with movement. _

_ ‘I’m going to the garage,’ Dean muttered. ‘I’ll be back whenever.’ _

_ The last thing Sam properly heard was the door slamming shut. _

_ Everything between then and a trip to the bathroom was a blur. One minute, Sam was at the table, and the next, he stood in front of the mirror above the sink with clenched fists, and a furrowed brow, and guilt crawling up his sides, lodging in his throat. _

_ Then, just seconds later, there was a crash. Dozens of small, glass shards fell to the ground, into the sink, down the drain, and Sam was shaking, glass piercing the skin of his outstretched fist. _

_ And he probably should’ve moved, or cleaned his hand, or cleaned up the bathroom; made it easy for Dean to come home again. But the glass stayed in his hand, tiny little punctures in his flesh, and eventually, the blood stopped running.  _

_ Dean came home some six hours later with a much more cheerful tone than before.  _

_ ‘Sam?’ He shouted, and Sam wondered for a second if he’d been drinking. ‘Listen, man, I’m, uh, sorry about-’ _

_ Dean’s footsteps shuddered to a halt and within seconds, he was running into Sam’s room, kneeling down beside his bed, grabbing Sam’s wrists.  _

_ ‘Sammy? Sam, what happened?’ Dean asked, voice quiet but confident, persuasive.  _

_ ‘I, uh, I dunno, just-’ Sam took a deep breath, tried to clench his hand as Dean turned it over, ran his fingers over all the jagged, bloody lines. ‘One minute I was there and then I just- it didn’t hurt, Dean, why didn’t-’ _

_ ‘No, shh,’ Dean murmured, the worried tone never leaving him. ‘We’re gonna get you all patched up, alright? It’s not even that bad, you’ll be good as new in no time.’ _

_ Sam, processing a bout of guilt-ridden exhaustion, fell forward; his head collided with Dean’s shoulder and he gripped his brother’s shirt in his uninjured hand as he did so.  _

_ ‘’m sorry about the bathroom,’ Sam mumbled.  _

_ Sam felt Dean shift, and soon there was one hand gripping his hair and another wrapped tightly around his shoulder. It felt and smelled incredibly like home.  _

_ ‘Think you can stand, Sammy?’ Dean asked. Sam nodded gently against him and soon, they were draped over the couch, Sam’s hand newly bandaged and his head against Dean’s thigh, eyes closed, breathing calm.  _

_ Dean nudged him. ‘Sam?’ _

‘Sammy?’ Dean whispered, hands gripping his brother’s face, rough fingers trailing over soft skin. Sam opened the eyes he hadn’t known he’d closed. 

A quick glance around revealed familiar faces; Gabe stood by the door, looking smaller than Sam had ever seen him, arms crossed and face pinched with concern; Cas lingered near Dean’s side, toward the edge of the bed, hand outstretched, ready to help. 

And then Dean; filling his vision with scared eyes and hitched breath.

Sam blinked, squinted weakly. ‘Huh?’

Dean looked so utterly  _ relieved,  _ that Sam almost asked what was wrong. His brother gave a small, barely-there smile, reaching back to rub the nape of Sam’s neck;  _ to ground him,  _ he slowly realized. ‘There you are, Sammy. What d’you say we head on home?’

Sam paused, ran through the words a few times. He shook his head, a weak gesture. ‘No. It’s, uh….it’s okay, I’ll just, uh, stay here-’

‘We aren’t just leavin’ you here all by your lonesome, Samshine,’ Gabe said from the other side of the room, his voice soft. ‘This party sucks, anyhow.’

_ No, it doesn’t,  _ Sam thought, the events of the night replaying behind his eyelids,  _ again, _ filled with flashing lights and unfamiliar faces.  _ We were having fun. Actual fun, for the first time in forever, and I went and ruined it. _

Sam looked down, and his hands were shaking. In fact, every part of him was trembling in one way or another. He hadn’t noticed it before.

He also recognized the feeling of not getting enough air into his lungs, even though there was plenty to spare. It was lingering in his throat, and he hadn’t noticed that, either.

With the evidence piling up, and the words  _ panic attack  _ flittering around his brain, Sam abruptly nodded. ‘Yeah. Home.’

Dean backed up slightly, Cas at his side, and Sam stood up; thankfully, he didn’t sway on his feet, and Dean’s noticeable panic was kept at bay, although he did keep a firm grip on Sam’s forearm. Nobody was sure if it was for Dean’s own comfort or to keep Sam standing. 

Gabe held open the door as the three passed through it; on the way out, he reached for Sam’s hand, their fingers entwining, Sam’s other hand wrapped tightly around his stomach as if to properly hold him upright. 

The drive home found them in slightly different positions; Sam was pressed against Gabe’s side, head turned into his shoulder. Gabe held Sam’s hand tight and traced light patterns into the soft skin. Dean was driving, of course, and Cas sat beside him, legs pulled up onto the upholstery, eyes drawn to Dean like they’d been from the first time the two had met.

The radio was on; a late night talk show, but the volume was down low.

Over the mumbling of the talk show host and the rumbling of the car’s engine, Sam spoke. ‘What happened?’

He turned to look at Dean, who briefly glanced in the rearview mirror, before fixing his eyes on the road once again. ‘Panic attack, or somethin’ like it, I think. One of those ones where you just- you ain’t  _ here,  _ anymore.’

Dean seemed to chuckle, but it was more anger -  _ guilt  _ \- than anything. 

‘God, you haven’t had one of those in years.’

And they both knew when the last time had been; it had involved Sam, Dean, a driving mishap in some small, rural town, and a  _ very  _ pissed off John Winchester.

Sam had meant to help Dean calm down their father, tell him it wasn’t even that bad, that they’d both get some extra money on the side to pay for the damage. He might’ve even taken the blame, if it kept their Father off of Dean’s case.

But instead, the night ended with John slamming the front door. Dean’s hands were clenched in anger, but his face was pale in terror.

Dean found Sam sitting in his bedroom, against the wall under the window sill. No matter how much Dean shouted, no matter how many times he shook Sam’s shoulders with as much strength as he could muster, his little brother didn’t speak.

The rest of the night found the four in Sam and Dean’s apartment, sitting on an array of pillows and blankets and mattresses. The TV was on, and small bowls of food sat between them.

Sam lay in Gabe’s lap, and Dean in Cas’. Sam almost smiled, but exhaustion had taken over, didn’t let him stretch his features.

He’d had a thought in the back of his mind since they’d arrived home that night; it lingered, because Sam knew the thought all too well.

And he planned on saying it to Dean for no reason other than to have it in the open. But after seeing Dean almost asleep, the light of the TV spreading phantom images onto his skin, Sam couldn’t do it. He couldn’t ruin this night more than he already had.

_ Dean,  _ he had planned to say, but repeated it to himself instead.  _ Do you know what it’s like to want to live so bad, and die at the same time? _

 

— 

 

The car was silent, and Dean was clenching his hands around the wheel so they didn’t shake. 

They’d been shaking a lot, lately, and Dean wasn’t as secretive as he hoped to be. 

As they approached Sioux Falls, the air felt like a vacuum. It sucked up Sam’s words, his thoughts, and kept him staring straight ahead; the only comfort was that in only a few hours, they’d be drinking beer with Bobby and Ellen, and Dean would be complaining about all the cars Bobby had outback, and Jo would be smiling and laughing and calling him a college boy. 

When Sam began at Stanford, their monthly, sometimes weekly visits to Sioux Falls turned into yearly trips up and down. There was nobody to run from, no safe haven to get to, and they no longer packed every item they owned into duffel bags and suitcases, not knowing if they’d ever go back. 

Dean hadn’t given Sam much notice on the matter. Two days before they were due to leave, he’d strolled into the kitchen, given the news, and abruptly departed to work.

Along with abrupt departures, Sam had noticed the space Dean had put between them. At first, Sam recognized it as an absence; Dean wouldn’t stick around in the same room as him. When he did, he watched Sam as if waiting for him crack under his stare.

Then he’d noticed it as how Dean’s confident demeanor seemed to crumble when Dean spoke and Sam didn’t turn to him, didn’t acknowledge that he’d said anything.

It reminded Sam of when he was fourteen and Dean was eighteen, and it was the anniversary of their mother’s death.

John hadn’t spoken to Sam properly in two weeks.

All communication between them had been rough - and from Sam’s perspective, thoroughly terrifying. Doors slamming when they were in the same room, every object picked up or put down just a little too heavily. Sam’s questions were only answered if he repeated them up to five times, and even then, they were answered with a scowl and a voice that let Sam know that he wasn’t wanted there.

For years, Sam had put it down to grief. Dean told him this was normal, everyone that’s lost somebody they loved acts like this.

Sam held his tongue, held back his constant flow of thoughts.

_ If this is so normal, why aren’t you acting like this? You lost Mom, too. _

And with that came the repeated realization that after ten, twelve years, Sam still didn’t think he had a Mom. He only had the idea of one; a romanticized version that John had claimed to love so dearly.

Dean said that they were in love, he remembered it; remembered Mary’s hugs, and John’s laugh, and the way John pressed a kiss to Mary’s cheek while she cooked dinner. 

But if John loved her, why couldn’t he love her children?

And Sam realized he was saying this out loud just after he’d uttered the last word, taking in a shaky breath, and looked up to see his brother’s angry expression, eyebrows furrowed, mouth downturned. But anger turned to shock when Dean was no longer looking at Sam, but past him - at the door, and there were footsteps, a hand on Sam’s shoulder, attempting to clench into a fist.

In the end, Sam’s throat was tight and his eyes burned but he did not cry; he just soaked in all of his Father’s words while Dean shouted at John to stop. That hand on his shoulder was the only kind of contact they’d had in so long, and it was followed only by arguing.

Sam remembered the conversation vividly; according to John, Sam was disrespectful, ungrateful, and would’ve been a disappointment to his Mother.

He stopped listening halfway through, tired of the pounding in his head, and the lump in his throat, and John’s booming voice. It was quiet for a while, and Sam treasured it; he may have even begun to smile during that time, because that was as quiet as the world had ever been on Mary Winchester’s anniversary. Ten years ago, John just cried, and then took care of his kids, and Sam focused on the forgotten faces of who his older brother and Father used to be.

John disappeared out the front door with a full wallet and car keys as the sun began to descend over the gradient blue sky. Sam found himself on the floor, at the edge of the bed a few hours later, and Dean was next to him; crying, shaking, curled over their book of contacts.

It took Sam a few minutes to actually be able to speak. When he did, a quiet and questioning “Dean?’, his brother just cried harder.

That’s how Bobby found them some three hours later, and Sam’s head found itself in Dean’s lap the entire drive up to Sioux Falls. Now, Sam was driving past the same signs and houses he remembered from years before, and felt the strangest sense of deja vu. But instead of residing in the back seat, he was riding shotgun, and Dean’s face was scrunched up, his knuckles white.

Sam breathed out quietly. ‘Listen, Dean, I’m sorry for-’

‘ _ Don’t _ -’ Dean began, voice rough. ‘Don’t apologize.’

Sam angled himself toward the window. ‘I know I, uh,  _ worried  _ you. I’m apologizing for that. I should’ve told you if I wanted to go home, not just- just lock myself in a room.’

Dean shook his head. ‘Not your fault.’

And Sam was ready to argue, but Dean looked too damn exhausted to bicker back and forth, so he just turned on the stereo, hummed along; let Dean know he was  _ here. _

They reached Bobby’s later that evening, the sky orange and cloudy, the day still warm. Jo answered the door.

Her neutral expression turned to one of complete excitement. She practically jumped on top of Dean, and then Sam, trying to start a conversation while doing so. She wrapped her arms around Dean’s neck, and then Sam’s middle, and they both pressed an absentminded kiss into her hair.

Bobby and Ellen appeared at the doorway to the kitchen, and then they were barrelling toward the brothers.

‘Been too long, boys,’ Ellen said, a small grin turning up the corners of her mouth. She stepped forward, hugging both of them tight. Bobby did the same, patting them on the shoulder.

‘We couldn’t stay away for too long,’ Dean smirked. Ellen and Bobby grabbed beers from the fridge. Jo laughed, helped them with their bags.

_ This is home,  _ Sam thought, easier than he had in years. 

 

— 

 

When Jo appeared in his doorway at seven that morning—fully aware he’d been awake for hours, because she was wiser than her years—and begged Sam to go for a walk with her, he was skeptical.

But once she’d hauled him out of the tiny bed that once fit him, and forced him into suitable outdoor clothes that didn’t consist of jeans and a winter hoodie, he felt  _ normal,  _ perfectly and utterly so, for the first time in a long time. Because Sam remembered doing this; a routine of theirs, started so long ago, because both Sam and Jo were early risers for more similar reasons than they would ever care to share. There was a small river in town that nobody ever cared to look at if you walked out far enough, and both Jo and Sam found themselves there every morning, many a summer ago.

And Sam used to go running  _ constantly _ , so much that Dean bought actual sun lotion incase he got burned. Mostly he ran to escape his Father’s criticism or Dean’s offhand comments, but then his reasons changed; he did it because he  _ liked  _ it. It gave him a chance to clear his head, toss aside the anger or panic lodged in his throat.

So they walked in silence until all the stores and office buildings were tiny in perspective, until the ground was muddy and unkept, until they were alone.

Jo unrolled a blanket from her bag, draped it over a dry area of the ground. Sam lay on his back, knees tucked up, and Jo sat cross legged. 

Jo searched her bag absentmindedly for a few minutes, before looking down at Sam. ‘Never took you for a city boy, y’know.’

‘Yeah, me neither.’ Sam huffed out a laugh. ‘But Stanford’s in Cali, so I figured I kinda had to go.’

Jo shook her head to herself, looking down at her lap slightly. ‘Mom never told me ‘bout it. Just  _ waited  _ for me to notice y’all never came home for Halloween. Or Christmas.’

Guilt curled into a ball in Sam’s stomach; he had meant to call Jo, had meant to write to her. He wanted to do  _ something. _

‘I’m sorry, Jo,’ Sam said, sitting up on the blanket and looking her in the eye. ‘It’s just...my Dad, he knows where you guys live, he knows if we were gonna go anywhere it’d be here.’

Jo nodded; understanding. ‘Nah, I get it, Sam. You wanted to get outta that shithole, couldn’t risk gettin’ dragged back in.’

She paused, seemed to recollect herself. 

And then the Jo Sam had known his whole life was back again, all smiles and laughs and sarcastic remarks.

She leaned over to Sam, playfully slapped his shoulder. ‘Well, c’mon! What’s college like? Is Dean workin’? D’ya have friends?’

Sam grinned. ‘I mean, it’s—it’s college! There’s a crap ton of work, my schedule’s all over the place, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lived off coffee more than I’ve eaten food.’

Jo giggled, grabbing a soda from her bag, and Sam continued. ‘Dean’s working in that garage he mentioned a year back—yeah, he  _ actually  _ set it up. Call him what you want, but he doesn’t bluff. Friends-wise, uh…’

Jo cocked her head, raised her eyebrows.

‘I may have a, uh—’ Sam grabbed a soda from her bag, mumbling into it—‘boyfriend.’

And Jo practically spat out her entire drink, arms flailing, scrambling towards Sam with pride and childlike happiness.

Sam laughed, held his hands out. ‘It’s not a big deal! Dean has one as well— well, I mean,  _ Dean  _ keeps saying they’re not  _ official  _ yet, but they totally are.’

‘Holy shit!’ Jo shouted, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Sam and Dean Winchester goin’ on  _ dates _ ? Doing somethin’ other than squabblin’ with each other? I never thought I’d see the day.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Sam said, rolling his eyes. ‘They were supposed to come here with us, actually. But they had some family stuff, so they stayed back in Cali.’

‘They’re related?’ 

‘Brothers.’ Sam nodded in confirmation. ‘Cas and Gabe. Gabe’s in law with me, Cas is in psychology.’

Jo looked up at Sam with a caring expression. ‘Does he make you happy? Do they make the both of you happy?’

Sam smiled. ‘Yeah, they do.’

As happy as Sam could be, anyway. And that was enough for him.

‘What about when you’re not with him?’ Jo continued, her grin now a shaky smile.

Sam ducked his head slightly, because today had started out so  _ great,  _ and he didn’t want to ruin it.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Sam said, not anywhere near as convincingly as he’d hoped.

‘Sam,’ Jo began, and Sam looked the other way. ‘My parents don’t tell me much, but they’ve talked about John. Ain’t nobody supposed to be on top of their game after that.’

‘It wasn’t even that bad,’ Sam clipped, just as it was rehearsed in his head. ‘I’ll get over it.’

Jo shook her head. ‘You don’t needa get over it, Sam.’

She paused.

‘Dean told me ‘bout the, uh, whole thing with the mirror, and the drinkin’, and…’

‘When did—Why did he tell you?’ Sam stuttered.

‘Last night, after y’all had gone up,’ Jo explained reluctantly. ‘He’s worried about you, Sam. Goddamn terrified, actually.’

‘Don’t see what he’s so scared of,’ Sam muttered. ‘I’m  _ fine. _ ’

‘Are you happy?’

And that made Sam pause. Nobody had really asked Sam if he was happy in  _ this  _ context. He’d been asked if he was okay more times than he could count, and he could lie easily. Was he physically fine? Yes. Emotionally? No.

But Sam knew people, knew their mannerisms, and to most, how he looked mattered more than he felt. And that was to be expected, because he’s known a lot of people who thought his problems were seen and not heard.

But then Jo asked him if he was  _ happy,  _ which is an entirely different question.

‘Yeah, I really am,’ Sam lied.

And later that day, while Jo filled him in on their lives up until now, her feet dipping into the water, Sam sat next to her and wondered if he should’ve told the truth.

 

— 

 

In the buzzing mess that was his head, Sam remembered a phone call, Cas’s voice—utterance of the words  _ Gabe  _ and  _ knife  _ and  _ brother,  _ shaky, blank—and somebody screaming. 

_ He  _ was the one to scream, Sam recalled, and he wondered if Gabe had screamed when it happened, too. 

But he didn’t care, for he was in the Impala without so much as a spare change of clothes within minutes. There were flashes of faces; Dean grabbed his arm, looking like he’d just been slapped. Bobby looked cautious. Ellen looked apologetic. Jo looked terrified. 

He’d said, “Gabe’s fucking dying,” on his way out of the rickety door as easily as if he’d told them his boyfriend was coming to join them. 

And Gabe was supposed to, he should’ve been  _ here, _ but the offer went turned down with a silly shake of the head and the utterance of “work’s a bitch” and “family problems”. 

But Gabe was now bleeding out on the way to a shitty public hospital with a knife in his stomach, courtesy of a brother he hadn’t seen in a decade, and Sam wasn’t  _ there,  _ and Gabe should’ve been  _ here,  _ and Sam didn’t kiss him before left and he forgot to call; past sentences of assault were left ignored based on Gabe’s word that everything was fine, the bridge between wrong and right shattered and Gabe unable to pick up the pieces in time. But Lucifer wanted to go after Michael, and Gabe hated his family and their dysfunctionality but he couldn’t  _ stand  _ to see them gone-

But Sam swerved on the road and quickly got it back under control, because he  _ knew  _ Dean would hate him if he ruined the car, and that was probably the only reason he’d gotten it back on the road.

And at some point Sam slumped against the seat, and he thought of how he was an omen for death; his Mother’s death had on him, and Gabe was going to die because of his lack of insistence, because he wasn’t convincing enough. What next? Would a car fall on Dean at work while Sam was busy doing coursework? Would Gabe’s brother come after Cas as another revenge attempt? 

This turn of events felt like betrayal, like things had been going so right, but now the tables had turned, the tide shifted. He’d felt so  _ loved  _ for so long, and had built a makeshift family to show for it, only to be ruined.

_ That’s the anxiety talking,  _ Naomi had said to him once when he went on a tangent as such. 

_ No, it’s my common sense,  _ Sam had replied, voice a mumble.  _ I don’t want to be the last one alive, when everyone I know has died. _

_ You can’t control that,  _ Naomi smiled; pitiful.

Sam assured her.  _ Yes I can. _

And for some reason, in his brother’s ‘67 Chevrolet Impala, on the way back to his dying boyfriend in California, like he had done so many times before, Sam apologized. 

He apologized, last resort. A final retreat. A bundle of cloth to break the inevitable fall. 

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ Sam began, turning at a crossroads as a blue line seemed to flash past his window, but went unnoticed. Those first three words were rehearsed and in the back of his head from morning to night, and his throat burned. ‘’m sorry, Dean. Gabe.’

Sam associated what he’d done wrong to the people he’d wronged. To prove he knew they were right all along, like they’d wanted, but he was always too proud to show it. 

‘I should’ve stopped,’ Sam muttered, and didn’t know if he was speaking to his brother or his father. For a split second, both of them merged in his mind; one face, one name, one personality.

He listed off some others; Cas, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Jess, his professors, the students he knew, those he didn’t. His high school councillors, that teacher who handed him long-sleeved shirts and bandages when he was early to class and didn’t say a word about what the scars were from. 

Dean’s friends who played football with him, taught him to pick locks. That boy who talked to him in math class. The girl who sat with him at lunch and gave him her spare Gameboy.

Naomi. Uriel. Anna. 

They had tried  _ so hard. _

But he’d left Sioux Falls three hours ago and his phone was dead. Sam wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse, and any hope had drained from him the minute Cas called. He wanted to charge his phone and call Cas for  _ something _ , some reassurance, any kind of confirmation that Gabe would be okay, but what if Sam didn’t get a relieved sigh and a run-over of Gabe’s condition? What if his voice was met with tears? Anger? The beginnings of an investigation with his boyfriend’s cold body pictured on news stations with search warrants for a man named Lucifer?

And all that replaced his liveliness was this numbness, mixed with the blessing of tears.

Sam’s hands were shaking and his eyes were drooping with the plain exhaustion of it all, and he could see Gabe laughing, see Anna’s caring smile when they made progressed, see Naomi’s silent fear when Sam gave his relationship with his father a one out of ten and then explained why. 

He saw Dean, smiling, and thought back to a time when Dean took him  _ swimming.  _ They went to the beach on Sam’s fifteenth birthday because John was out of town and Dean was a better father than John could ever be. They collected rocks and shells and fell into the water from tall grassy slopes like this was land they had conquered, and Sam realized that the sound of being underwater wasn’t too different to the sound of moving cars. 

Sam’s eyes slid shut, his hands fell from the wheel and to his sides, limp and heavy and without purpose. 

He wanted to go  _ swimming _ .

And then the car slid. Flipped. 

Sam felt glass, and bone, and blood, and agony, and then he was gone. 

Dying felt a lot like swimming, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**part iii.**

_ “Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.” _

_ — Guy de Maupassant, Complete Works _

  
  


Behind the veil of darkness, there was a buzzing white fluorescent. It disappeared behind a moving shadow, now and then, and those were the times Sam enjoyed most. Sometimes the light was red and sparkling, or golden, or deep blue, freckled across the darkness like an artist flicking paint onto a canvas.

This was death, Sam assumed, and felt as if he’d been let down. He’d felt that death would be the final frontier, a celebration of the life you’d had and what was possibly to come but it was just this  _ darkness _ , this unending and thought-swallowing black cover over what might’ve been his eyes but he wasn’t so sure anymore.

Maybe this was limbo, he thought. Maybe he was to wait, and one day the doors to whatever came after death would  _ open  _ and this floating would instead feel like  _ flying. _

So, Sam waited.

 

— 

 

Next, came sound. And Christ, once it arrived, he wished he’d never found it.

At first, there was a buzzing; a gentle pitter-patter of static moving from left to right, or right to left (Sam wasn’t so sure of directions anymore), and then it was gone again, as soon as it had arrived.

But he still treasured it, thrust out his mind, willing it to reach its ends and take the sound in his hands; tell it to stay, be comforted by it’s presence.

And once he did just that, and the static swirled around him in dipping and arching levels of intensity, came it’s objection to staying in one place too long.

It was  _ loud -  _ horrifically, agonizingly loud and if Sam had ears he would cover them, scream until his voice drowned everything else out. This sound didn’t swirl around in comforting ripples. It simply existed, planted itself like a tree in the middle of Sam’s being and stretched itself out until the blood he may have had ran dry in his fingertips, and he wished for a simpler death, a quieter one.

 

— 

 

A long time after, as if the universe had granted Sam pity, he acquired a sense of smell.

The first thing he recognised was wind; cold and crisp, and Sam heard it rush in from  _ somewhere _ , heard it surround him, and then slowly drift out.

It was the first sound that had comforted Sam in what seemed like eons. It drowned out the buzzing and the static and the overwhelming  _ loudness  _ of existence, and he welcomed it with all the appreciation and thanks he could afford.

 

— 

 

Apparently, Sam had upper-arms. This led him to the conclusion that, by some miracle, he also had hands.

Because one day, somebody laid their hand on his upper-arm and squeezed it, and Sam could hear this person speak, albeit almost inaudible and mainly comprised of slurred words and miniscule sounds; a gruff voice sighing, followed by something being scraped across something else - a chair and the floor, maybe.

This figure talked for what seemed like a decade, and toward the end, took Sam’s apparent-hand in theirs, rubbing it slightly before disappearing.

It was the most overwhelmed Sam’s senses had been in a long time, but he didn’t mind. 

 

— 

 

The voices were getting clearer, day by day. And from the sound of it, they liked talking. A  _ lot. _

Random things, mostly. Explaining the reason behind the air’s sharp chill, the new smell that seemed to be food and what was included in it. These things, these people, explained their day in overwhelmingly intricate detail, excessively so, but it seemed as if they were scared of the gaps in one-sided conversation.

An unknown time ago, Sam realized that he recognized these voices, these gestures, the hands that held him down or ran through his hair.

Dean. Cas. 

They were  _ there. _

And he was dead.

But they were talking to him in a way you wouldn’t speak to a lifeless body, and because of that, a spark of hope flared in Sam’s chest.

 

— 

 

‘Sammy, you gotta wake up, man.’

Dean was here. He was holding Sam’s hand, leaning over him. He smelled like sleep, and diesel, and old leather. Just like Sam remembered.

‘I know you’re still fightin’, I  _ know,  _ but just— open your eyes, or move, or somethin’.’

The supposed bed Sam was lying on shifted, and Sam felt Dean’s hair tickle his side, his brother’s face pressed into the mattress, hand still gripping Sam’s.

‘It’s been so long, Sammy. So goddamn  _ long—’  _ Dean’s voice was thick, wet, and he paused. Chuckled. ‘Once you’re up and around, we’re going drivin’, alright? We’ll take baby to some fancy bar, and Cas will be there, and it’ll be fun, Sam. You just...You need to wake up for me.’

Dean patted Sam’s arm, and didn’t say another word.

 

— 

 

Sam began to understand time based on those around him.

He knew it was the morning if he could smell bacon, and eggs, and could hear them frying, the toaster popping up and breaking the consistent sizzling of oil. Dean always visited around lunchtime, and he usually brought a sandwich with him. Cas visited some days, sometimes after Dean, but didn’t speak; he just lingered, maybe told a story or two that must’ve been from a psychology book he’d found.

Dean visited him again, every night. This was the time when he held Sam’s hand and opened the window, smelling of oil and leather and  _ Dean,  _ and finally let the tears fall.

Sam began to count. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. 

And about one day and eighteen hours later, Dean entered the room, and shut the door behind him.

And Sam opened his eyes.

All his senses were targeted with the worst sights and smells and sounds, and everything was blurry and faded and moving slowly, but Sam refused to lie in that unknown ever again, losing track of time as soon as he’d found it and feeling so terribly  _ alone. _

But Dean, he was here. He was standing with his back facing the door and he was looking at Sam and neither of them were moving. 

‘Where’s—’ Sam began, but his vocal chords weren’t cooperating just yet and he coughed, throat raw, mouth dry. A bottle of water appeared, blurry but  _ there,  _ and Dean, a foggy mess of blue Henleys and spiked hair and dark eye circles, was there too, lifting a bottle cap filled with water to Sam’s lips.

He took it with as much grace as his limp form could afford to waste and soon, Dean placed the water to Sam’s left side.

Sam decided to try again with a quieter voice and softer tone, still too gravelly for his liking. ‘Where’s Gabe?’

But Dean wasn’t one to waste any time, and suddenly, he was hoisting Sam up, sitting him straight. His hands curved around Sam’s face and he was smiling, wild and bright and hopeful. ‘What d’you mean, Sammy? C’mon, we don’t needa talk about this now—’

But Sam knew his brother, and he knew that look in his eye.

‘Where  _ is he _ ?’ And for somebody who had been conscious for two minutes, barely able to speak for the duration, Sam surely knew how to raise his voice. He was shaking, stretching out from his core to his fingertips, his voice still gravelly and breaking, and it reminded him of Gabe, of the bathroom, of the failed presentation and the steep downhill slope to follow. ‘Short, uh, blonde hair, he’s my, um, my boyfriend and you call him that all the time and he—he was  _ stabbed _ and I need to—’

‘Sammy, it’s okay,  _ shh _ , you’re okay,’ Dean was murmuring over Sam’s ramblings, trying to pull his brother toward him, trying to assure him everything was alright with a hug. 

But Sam was angry, and why wasn’t Dean upset? Or worried? That shirt looked like the hand-me-down from his father that Dean had thrown away before they left for Stanford, and this wasn’t his room, and something was very,  _ very  _ wrong.

Sam shoved Dean back, bringing his hands up to his hair and  _ since when was his hair this long?  _ ‘Where are we? Where’s Gabe, did they get him to the hospital on time?’

A glance around and Sam noticed something; looked Dean in the eye, properly,  _ clearly,  _ for the first time in so long. ‘Get me Cas, I wanna talk to Cas. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t answer the—’

Dean pulled Sam toward him properly, this time, with deliberately rough movements. Sam collapsed against his brother, forehead pressed against Dean’s shoulder.

‘Djinn,’ Dean murmured.

That made Sam pause. He didn’t know what that was.

But the cogs in his brain were slowly churning away and he had heard that word before, sometime, in a life that felt different to this.

‘C’mon, Sam,’ Dean said with urgency, giving Sam a light shake. ‘Djinn. Mythological creature. Puts people into comas while they live in their dream world, or their worst nightmare. Sam and Dean Winchester. Hunters. Blue flashes of light-  _ C’mon,  _ man! Please, you gotta give me-’

But Sam had stopped listening, and although he was conscious and breathing and real, he knew that what Dean was saying was a complete lie, and this wasn’t  _ his  _ Dean, this wasn’t his brother.

And then Sam came to a conclusion.

_ This _ was the afterlife. Heaven or Hell, whatever it may have been. This was it, all that he would come to be.

So Sam pulled back from Dean, their eyes locked, and fumbled with the blankets on the bed. He pulled them over his trembling form, and turned on his side, away from Dean.

‘Sam?’ Dean began, and damn existence for making this version of his brother seem so lifelike.

Sam laughed, a hopeless and spiritless little thing, before closing his eyes. ‘I’m dead.’

‘You’re not dead, Sam.’

Dean sounded confused, and Sam clamped down his hands over his ears to block out his brother’s voice.

He repeated it, a mantra, affirmation. ‘I’m dead. I’m dead, I’m  _ dead, I’m- _ ’

And soon enough, Sam removed his hands from his ears just enough to hear the bedroom door slam closed.

 

— 

 

‘He hasn’t moved in days, Cas. If I touch him, he freaks out.’ Dean wasn’t even trying to whisper anymore. He’d given up on speaking outside the door in hushed voices. Instead, he hoped that speaking about Sam would trigger something; a memory, a way to break this wall down. ‘He thinks he’s dead.’

‘I’m afraid I cannot reverse the damage the djinn has caused without possibly affecting all of Sam’s memories,’ Cas said, glancing at Sam’s curled up form, a heap under a worn blanket. ‘If I remove his memories of the world he was in during his….coma, I may be forced to remove his memories of us entirely.’

Dean paused.

‘So...He wouldn’t knew who we are.’ 

‘Unfortunately, that is the case,’ Case frowned. ‘We have to just...wait it out, I presume.’

And after all Dean had been through in his lifetime, he didn’t like the odds of that, of  _ waiting it out _ . 

So he punched the wall with strained fists until Cas made him stop. He left the room after letting out a yell, all anger and pure fury, and pictured a shitty car with shitty beer like it was his safe space.

Sam still didn’t know what a djinn was.

 

— 

 

‘Dean called you an angel,’ Sam mumbled, his back to Cas, who had just entered through the door. ‘Sweetheart, too. Sunshine.’

The quiet thump of footsteps sent a shiver down Sam’s spine. 

‘I’m sorry I let your brother die.’

Cas didn’t speak; he stood straight, wearing the same clothes as always, and although Sam couldn’t see him, he could imagine the frown on Cas’ face. 

‘You didn’t kill Gabriel, Sam.’ Cas let emotion slip into his voice, a weak undertone of pity.  _ Fear. _

‘I didn’t stop him.’ Sam’s jagged nails ran white lines up and down his arms.

‘Stop who?’

And then he went quiet. Sam seemed to stop moving, breathing. 

And then, quietly; ‘I felt myself die.’

A pause. 

‘So why am I here?’

And Cas could have explained it all; the hunt, the djinn, the combined effects of blood loss and living in your own mind for what felt like almost a year. The blood and IV he stole, because Dean refused a hospital. The tears dried into a blanket from where Dean lay and cursed the world until his throat was raw. The deals they would have made just to have Sam wake up, talk,  _ smile.  _

But Sam still didn’t know what a djinn was, and vampires and werewolves belonged in novels he’d read over semester break. 

So, Cas approached Sam, pressed a hand into his shoulder - noting the way Sam jumped, and then almost collapsed in on himself - and sighed. 

 

— 

 

Four days later, Dean crept into Sam’s room to find two leather-bound books open on the floor. A third resided in Sam’s lap, speaking of blue lights and nightmares. 

For the first time in a lifetime, Dean smiled. For the first time since he’d woken up, Sam allowed Dean to bring in a basin of water. He willingly tipped his head back into the soap and suds and only trembled when they were done. 

 

— 

 

Sam had begun to speak, now and then. Dean would walk in to find Sam sitting up on the bed, or standing at the window. None of what he said made sense to him, but Dean tried to answer as honestly as he could.

This time, Sam was bent over a trashcan from the corner of the room, sweaty, panting.

‘Are we in California?’ He said between raw, painful gasps.

Dean sat beside Sam, pulled his hair from his face, and shook his head. ‘No.’

Sam threw up the emptiness of his stomach for another ten minutes before collapsing against Dean, head against his brother’s chest. 

Under any normal circumstances, Dean would’ve made a joke, trying to clear the tension for both his and Sam’s sake. But now, he quietly cleaned up the room, wiped at Sam’s face with a damp cloth, and tucked him back into bed.

 

— 

 

Their conversations were limited, but sometimes, on the best days, Sam would be okay with talking for hours.

It was as if the last three weeks hadn’t happened, and he and Dean just spoke like brothers - albeit distant brothers, but Dean was still thankful for every second.

They spoke of the differences between their “worlds” now, and Dean had stopped picking delicately at the wall in Sam’s brain, like it was fragile. Instead, he had begun to claw it down, begging, pleading for a change.

Change came slowly, but it was there.

‘Time differences.’ Sam said, slowly, tilted his head toward Dean, a silent indication to go first.

‘Three weeks, two days,’ Dean said with absolutely no faults. He’d been counting the days off the top of his head for so long, he didn’t even need to stop and think.

‘About eight, nine months,’ Sam muttered, glancing down.

They’d had this part of the conversation before, but Dean was still shocked at how  _ long  _ Sam had been in his other world for.

And there was a tiny part of Dean that resented how Sam didn’t know that it wasn’t real.

There were more things that Dean was shocked by; in Sam’s mind, himself and Cas dated, as did Sam and Gabriel. Mary had still died when they were children, John was a complete ass in both actions and words, but Sam went to Stanford, and Dean went with him. Dean got accepted into a mechanical engineering course. He owned a  _ garage.  _

‘Who is alive?’ Sam spat out without any warning, and Dean looked at him unexpectedly. He’d never asked that before. 

‘Sam-’

‘I’m asking it, you have to answer.’ Sam clenched his jaw. ‘You?’

‘Perfectly alive. Cas, too.’

‘Dad?’

‘No.’ Dean saw Sam’s eyes fall, and he let out a sigh of what seemed to be  _ relief.  _ But after a few days of recollecting, of letting old memories see the light, Dean wasn’t that surprised at the reaction.

Sam made his list, and with every new addition, his eyes got a little darker, his frown a little deeper. Anna, Naomi, Jess, Benny, Uriel,  _ Gabe _ . 

And finally— 

‘Lucifer?’

Dean attempted to smile, and prayed to every being he knew that Lucifer hadn’t touched a hair on Sam’s head in this California nightmare of his. ‘Locked up far, far away.’

‘Oh.’ Sam looked up at Dean, provided a weak smile to match his now teary eyes. ‘How?’

‘ _ You _ did it, Sam. You stopped him.’

Sam tried not to, but he cried for a long time after that, and Dean let him; rubbed his back, hugged him, combed his fingers through his hair. And afterward, for the first time in those weeks since Sam woke up, Dean brought him to the shower. 

The water didn’t terrify him, didn’t drag the repeated utterance of “ _ swimming”  _ from his lips, and Dean inwardly called it a miracle.

 

— 

 

But then there were the bad days. And when they occurred, dotted along the timeline like cracks in a pavement, they were  _ bad. _

They always began the same way; with a conversation. Sam would ask Dean a question, and it didn’t matter whether his answer was right or wrong. Sam didn’t listen afterwards, and stared through Dean like he wasn’t there at all. He would crawl back to his bed, refuse food and water, and repeat  _ “I’m dead,”  _ until his voice was hoarse and broken.

Sometimes, the conversation would happen in the kitchen. Sam would twirl a blunt knife in his hand and hold it over his stomach, let it hover there, until Dean pried it from his hands with a nervous smile.

If it happened in the bathroom, Dean would have to hold Sam up so as to keep him from practically drowning in the bath, keep him from sliding down under the water silently, like he was used to it.

And after these days, Dean went to Cas, and begged him to help; to find a cure, a way to make it easier, a way to keep Sam  _ here  _ and not in his land of therapy and high school graduates.

After Sam was found with a blunt kitchen knife the third time, Cas disappeared for two days.

And when he returned, he gave Dean a look, a smile.

Within minutes, Sam was lying on his bed, eyes closed, a pained expression on his face.

‘Are you sure this will work, Cas?’ Dean murmured, falling down into a chair beside the bed.

‘Extremely so,’ Cas replied, taking a step toward Sam. ‘Brains are very intricate, and it would’ve been very dangerous to try this on Sam previously. However, I’ve been listening to you both, and he is now able to differentiate between the real world and the one the djinn created. He knows our world exists, and has been piecing together information.’

Cas smiled down at Dean. ‘Now, I will be able to pull forward his memories of this world, and those of the dreamworld will be pushed to the back. It’s a transfer, of sorts. Very simple to do once you’re sure no harm can be caused. Sam will have all his memories, of this world and the other, and will be able to fully tell the difference.’

Dean nodded, turned to Sam. ‘It’ll be alright, Sammy. Just let Cas do his thing.’

Sam chuckled, weak and tired. ‘You should’ve been the one to do psychology, Dean.’

Dean patted his brother on the shoulder, kept a grip on his rest, and watched Cas leaned forward and press a hand to Sam’s forehead.

 

— 

 

Sam realized that, in the dream world, he never took much notice of the sky.

But he remembered it all, now, the past and present of two different worlds, and the sky was so  _ beautiful.  _

Dean had kept his promise; he’d given it three days—three insufferable days of bedrest and mother henning—but soon enough, they all made the familiar trek to car, turned on the radio, and drove for who knows how long. By the time they reached their destination, Dean was wearing a smug smile, and the air smelled pretty, and Sam could hear waves. There was maram grass along the sidewalk where people walked up and down.

The sea.

Holy  _ shit. _

Dean had to practically hold Sam down and help him get ready, as they tossed bags and towels and sunglasses around. They were a laughing mess, and Sam was telling them the good things about the dream world with a smile on his face and not a tear shed as they hurried down the worn, wooden stairs.

By the time they made it down to the sand, Sam could tell that the sun was beginning to set; it had been an incredibly long drive, and Dean had refused to stop for anything but gas. The sky was a sort of dark blue, but the clouds were what took Sam’s breath away; pinks and blues and purples all mixed together like on a paint palette, drifting across the sky, the colours merging and changing constantly as they disappeared from sight.

The sand was warm under Sam’s feat. The waves rippled up onto the shore, gentle and calm. He didn’t realize that Dean and Cas had approached him until he felt a rough hand clasp his shoulder. Dean pointed to the water, eyebrows raised in a question. Sam nodded.

They swam until midnight. Sam dove deep underneath the surface, his head popping up now and then. Dean had almost forgotten what it was like to be terrified of Sam drowning, of hurting himself; in this moment, Sam was just so happy and carefree, all smiles and grand gestures and joyful laughing as he pulled Dean and Cas into the water with a loud splash. 

For the latter portion of the night, the three sat on the sand, let the waves roll up underneath them. The stars had come out between the clouds, and the sky was a deep purple.

Sam felt the water wash over him, heard Dean and Cas chatting idly by his side, and thought that maybe, once again, life was worth living. He had lived nine months in three weeks, struggled through two lifetimes and suffered the consequences. The recovery wasn’t pretty; he remembered everything, the tears and the harm he did to himself, the feeling of something being missing but not knowing  _ what.  _ The anger he felt when Dean mentioned something he should’ve known about; the distant, shocked look in Dean’s eye when Sam offhandedly mentioned their Father and the anger he couldn’t stop feeling toward him.

But this was the life Sam had been given, with all it’s faults and mistakes. 

And somewhere along the way, Sam decided life wasn’t all that bad, and became determined to  _ do  _ something with it, with his brother and best friend by his side.

The first thing he wanted to do, was  _ live. _

So, in the silence, Sam spoke.

‘Hey, Dean?’

‘Mhm?’ 

‘What’s your opinion on pastel sweaters?’

Sam bought him one the next day.


End file.
